The District of Columbia attorney general sued President Donald Trumps inaugural committee and family business on Wednesday, alleging that the committee overpaid to use the Trump Organizations hotel in the nations capital.
Trumps inaugural committee, a nonprofit, “improperly wasted by grossly overpaying the Defendant Trump Entities for use of event space at the Trump Hotel for certain Inaugural events,” the court filing (pdf) from Attorney General Karl Racine stated.
The committee, or PIC, abandoned its purpose of supporting activities surrounding the 2017 inauguration “when it wasted approximately $1 million of charitable funds in overpayment for the use of event space at the Trump Hotel, owned and controlled by the Trump Entities,” the filing stated.
“A nonprofit abandons its public purpose when it allows any portion of its funds to be spent in ways that are designed to benefit private persons or companies. This well-established nonprofit principle, the prohibition on private inurement, was specifically included in the PICs articles of incorporation.”
“District law requires nonprofits to use their funds for their stated public purpose, not to benefit private individuals or companies,” Racine said in a statement. “In this case, we are seeking to recover the nonprofit funds that were improperly funneled directly to the Trump family business.”
The filing said that Rick Gates, a former Trump campaign official who was sentenced to 45 days in jail in December 2019 for financial fraud and lying to investigators, was an inaugural committee executive and agreed with the managing director of the Trump Hotel and members of Trumps family to pay Trump entities $175,000 a day for the committee to reserve event space from Jan. 17 to Jan. 20 in 2017.
Adding other charges, the committee spent a little over $1 million for the space, the court filing alleged. The committees event planner said that the charges were at least twice the market rate, according to an email published by Racine, who also alleged that the event space should have actually been provided for free because tRead More – Source
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The Epoch Times
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