The Donald J. Trump Foundation has been court-ordered disbanded and its board of directors, Donald J. Trump, Donald J. Trump, Jr., Ivanka Trump and Eric F. Trump must undergo in-person, interactive board training sessions pertaining to charitable organizations and may not be involved in nonprofit organizations in the future without stringent restrictions and oversight.

PERSONAL MISUSE OF FOUNDATION

Judge Salliann Scarpulla, in response to a lawsuit filed by the attorney general of the State of New York following a series of Washington Post stories raising questions about the Trump Foundation’s fundraising and expenditures, ruled: “Mr. Trump breached his fiduciary duty to the Foundation and that waste occurred to the Foundation.”

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Those breached fiduciary duties include allowing his campaign to orchestrate a fundraiser ostensibly for the benefit of veterans, but in fact primarily for his presidential campaign.

Documents in the lawsuit proved that substantial sums of Foundation money were used to pay business debts, finance the presidential campaign and even purchase a giant painting of Trump. Nothing vain or narcissistic about that.

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$2 MILLION FINE levied

Trump must pay $2 million to specified charity organizations under the court-approved settlement and a fine of $2 million because he and his family used the nonprofit Foundation to further his political and business interests.

Although the Trumps admitted the misconduct in court documents, our bully-President issued a defiant statement claiming he had been attacked by “political hacks.” At least he is consistently dishonest.

TRUMP UNIVERSITY ORDERED CLOSED

This is not Trump’s first brush with fraudulent charitable businesses. For one, Trump has been sued over 4,000 times in the past three decades per USA Today, at least 1,300 times since 2000 according to Bloomberg. As he says, a real genius.

Last year a federal appeals court upheld a $25 million settlement to students of the now defunct Trump University. Trump had claimed as a candidate that he “never settled lawsuits” and would not settle the Trump University lawsuit, but days after the 2016 election he agreed to pay $25 million.

That was after U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curial upheld the students’ lawsuit, after which Trump called the Indiana-born judge a “hater” and a Mexican who was biased against him.

Trump University before it was ordered closed, advertised that students would learn “The Art of the Deal,” the book Trump did not write and whose author, Tony Schwartz, frequently speaks despairingly about Trump.

PORTER’S TAKE

I don’t know what to say. Nothing this President does surprises me. How low can you go?

Jim Porter is an attorney with Porter Simon licensed in California and Nevada, with offices in Truckee and Tahoe City, California, and Reno, Nevada. Jim’s practice areas include: real estate, development, construction, business, HOAs, contracts, personal injury, accidents, mediation and other transactional matters. He may be reached at porter@portersimon.com or http://www.portersimon.com.