posted September 17, 2016 10:08 PM            

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President Barack Obama went to Philadelphia on Sept. 13 to campaign for Hillary Clinton, who was recovering from pneumonia. In his speech, Obama didn’t hold back in his critique of Clinton’s opponent, Donald Trump.

In one particularly vivid line, Obama took a shot at Trump’s foundation, contrasting it with the Clintons’ foundation, which focuses on improving global health.

The Clinton Foundation has been attacked by critics for taking money from donors who might have business before a future President Clinton.

But Obama was having none of it.

"You want to debate foundations and charities?" Obama said. "One candidate's family foundation has saved countless lives around the world. The other candidate's foundation took money other people gave to his charity and then bought a six-foot-tall painting of himself."

Obama added, to laughter, "I mean, you know, he had the taste not to go for the 10-foot version, but…"

We have previously written about how the Clinton Foundation helped 9 million people receive lower-cost HIV/AIDS medicine, as well as the foundation’s controversies.

But what about Obama’s statement that Trump’s foundation "took money other people gave to his charity and then bought a six-foot-tall painting of himself"?

The White House confirmed that the statement stems from a widely read Washington Post story by reporter David Fahrenthold, who’s written a series of stories about Trump Foundation and has inquired with organizations around the country to see if they actually received money from the real estate mogul.

Fahrenthold provided new details of his investigations in a Sept. 10, 2016, Post article headlined, "How Donald Trump retooled his charity to spend other people’s money."

Based on a review of 17 years of tax filings by the Donald J. Trump Foundation and interviews with more than 200 individuals and groups who were listed as recipients of its gifts, Fahrenthold found that "nearly all" of its money in recent years has come from people other than Trump, with his most recent personal gift to the foundation’s coffers dating from 2008.

Experts told Fahrenthold that such an arrangement "is almost unheard of for a family foundation."

The story by Fahrenthold includes the anecdote referenced by Obama in Philadelphia, which Fahrenthold wrote was one of two cases he found in which Trump used his money from the charity to "buy himself a gift." By doing so, he wrote, the foundation appeared to be flouting IRS rules by buying items that only seemed to be for Trump’s benefit.

"In 2007, for instance, Trump and his wife, Melania, attended a benefit for a children’s charity held at Mar-a-Lago. The night’s entertainment was Michael Israel, who bills himself as ‘the original speed painter.’ His frenetic act involved painting giant portraits in five to seven minutes — then auctioning off the art he’d just created.

"He painted Trump.

"Melania Trump bid $10,000.

"Nobody tried to outbid her.

" ‘The auctioneer was just pretty bold, so he said, "You know what just happened: When you started bidding, nobody’s going to bid against you, and I think it’s only fair that you double the bid," ' Israel said in an interview last week.

"Melania Trump increased her bid to $20,000.

" ‘I understand it went to one of his golf courses,’ Israel said of the painting.

"The Trump Foundation paid the $20,000, according to the charity that held the benefit."

Fahrenthold’s article notes that the Post submitted detailed questions to the campaign but officials declined to comment. The campaign did not respond to an inquiry from PolitiFact for this article.

We asked Fahrenthold whether Obama’s version jibed with his reporting.

"It seems pretty accurate to me," Fahrenthold told PolitiFact. "I talked to both the charity that held the auction and the artist who made the painting. They told me Melania Trump had actually been the one bidding on the painting at the auction, which she won for $20,000 -- half went to charity, half went to the artist. But the actual check came from the Trump Foundation, of which Donald is president and Melania is not an officer of any kind."

He added that the auction seems to have been held in 2006 but the check wasn’t cut until 2007, a year in which "almost all of the money in the Trump Foundation was other people’s money."

Specifically, according to Fahrenthold’s reporting, the Trump Foundation began that year with $4,238 in the bank. Trump himself gave $35,000 to the foundation that year. But other donors gave $4.055 million, primarily a single $4 million gift from Vince and Linda McMahon, the founders of the WWE wrestling empire.

Using the most generous calculation, Fahrenthold said, Trump’s own money accounted for less than 1 percent of the total amount that entered the foundation that year, $4,094,238.

"So it was almost all other people’s money," he said.

So where is the painting? That’s a bit more mysterious. Even crowdsourcing the search through Twitter hasn’t produced a verified image of the painting.

"I can’t find the damn thing," Fahrenthold said. "It’s out there somewhere. Neither the painter nor the charity -- the Children's Place at Home Safe, in Boca Raton, Fla. -- have been able to provide a picture of it."

Our ruling

Obama said that Trump’s "foundation took money other people gave to his charity and then bought a six-foot-tall painting of himself."

Fahrenthold verified the anecdote about the painting with the painter, and his reporting found that, at the time the painting was auctioned, the vast majority of funds in the foundation’s coffers were from other people, not Trump. Based on the information available, the story seems solid.

We rate Obama’s statement True.

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posted September 20, 2016 01:06 PM            

"One candidate's family foundation has saved countless lives around the world."

That's interesting considering that only 10% of the foundation money went to charity and organizers are paid a comfy salary of hundreds of thousands.

The leaked emails showed that the majority of Hillary's private meetings while SOT, were not set up like normal meetings, and they were with people who were giving money to her foundation. Smells a little fishy. Especially with the whole erasing of the email server ordeal.

Clinton cut deals with large donators like the company owned by the Russian government and they didn't disclose millions of dollars coming in. Shady.

posted September 20, 2016 02:08 PM            

The Clinton Foundation actually gives around 88% to charitable causes. They have an A rating with Charity Watch, and a 4 star(highest available) rating with Charity Navigator, with a score of over 94 out of 100. They are also transparent in who gives what, which is why people are able to know exactly where these donations are coming from. That is not required by law, but they make that information available.

Here are links to the charity oversight organizations that I cited above.
http://www.charitywatch.org/ratings-and-metrics/bill-hillary-chelsea-clinton-founda tion/478
http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=16680

posted September 20, 2016 02:41 PM            

"Donald Trump spent more than a quarter-million dollars from his charitable foundation to settle lawsuits that involved the billionaire’s for-profit businesses, according to interviews and a review of legal documents.

Those cases, which together used $258,000 from Trump’s charity, were among four newly documented expenditures in which Trump may have violated laws against “self-dealing” — which prohibit nonprofit leaders from using charity money to benefit themselves or their businesses."

Full article...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-used-258000-from-his-charity-to-settle-legal-problems/2016/09/20/adc88f9c-7d11-11e6-ac8e-cf8e0dd91dc7_story.html

As a side note Randall, you thought the check number was low on the check image above. Below is another check, written 2 months prior. I guess that you were trying to suggest that the check image was fake, and that he didn't in fact pay for the 6 foot painting with his charity funds. As stated in the article, Trump apparently spent another $10,000 from the charity on a yet another portrait of himself.

posted September 21, 2016 02:10 AM            

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Originally posted by Bluejay:
^That 10% figure is not accurate! It was Carly Fiorina(then running for the Republican nomination) that accused the Clinton Foundation of only giving a small percentage of donations to charity, but she was referring to money that the Foundation gave directly to other charity organizations. Her comments were misleading, becasuse she was suggesting that the rest of the money was not going to charitable use. This was proven wrong.

The Clinton Foundation actually gives around 88% to charitable causes. They have an A rating with Charity Watch, and a 4 star(highest available) rating with Charity Navigator, with a score of over 94 out of 100. They are also transparent in who gives what, which is why people are able to know exactly where these donations are coming from. That is not required by law, but they make that information available.

Here are links to the charity oversight organizations that I cited above.
http://www.charitywatch.org/ratings-and-metrics/bill-hillary-chelsea-clinton-founda tion/478
http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=16680

The second site is Charity Navigator, the same organization that was mentioned in your linked article that put the Clinton Foundation on it's watch list. That article is from April of 2015, and they have since evaluated the Clinton Foundation and rated it 4 stars.

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posted September 21, 2016 02:11 AM            

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Originally posted by juniperb:
Guess Randall hasn`t watched todays news !

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posted September 21, 2016 02:14 AM            

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Originally posted by Bluejay:
This story just came out today....

"Donald Trump spent more than a quarter-million dollars from his charitable foundation to settle lawsuits that involved the billionaire’s for-profit businesses, according to interviews and a review of legal documents.

Those cases, which together used $258,000 from Trump’s charity, were among four newly documented expenditures in which Trump may have violated laws against “self-dealing” — which prohibit nonprofit leaders from using charity money to benefit themselves or their businesses."

Full article...
http://www.washin gtonpost.com/politics/trump-used-258000-from-his-charity-to-settle-legal-problems/2016/09/20/adc88f9c-7d11-11e6-ac8e-cf8e0dd91dc7_story.html

As a side note Randall, you thought the check number was low on the check image above. Below is another check, written 2 months prior. I guess that you were trying to suggest that the check image was fake, and that he didn't in fact pay for the 6 foot painting with his charity funds. As stated in the article, Trump apparently spent another $10,000 from the charity on a yet another portrait of himself.

Sorry the images are so large

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posted September 21, 2016 10:38 AM            

From IRS filing by the Clinton Foundation, the actual number is less than 6%! Right from Internal Revenue tax returns filed by the Clinton Foundation!

So, where did the money paid into the Clinton Foundation and into the bank accounts of Bill and Hill come from?

A Bill Clinton and Canadian mining mogul Frank Giustra meet with Kazakhstan’s dictator in his palace in Almaty. During the chat, Clinton champions the strongman’s efforts to head an international elections monitoring group contrary to stated U.S. foreign policy.

B Within days of the palace meeting, Giustra’s mining company UrAsia Energy Ltd. inks a deal giving it part ownership of three state-run uranium mines in Kazakhstan.

C Months after the Kazakhstan visit, Giustra donates a whopping $31.3 million to the Clinton Foundation.

D Giustra’s company — renamed Uranium One — snaps up uranium mills and mines across the American West, equivalent to 20 percent of the U.S.’ total production capacity.

E In three transactions from 2009 to 2013, Russia’s state-owned nuclear company, Rosatom, buys Uranium One. Since uranium is a strategic asset of vital importance to the U.S., then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had to sign off on the deal. She did so, effectively giving the Russians massive control over America’s uranium.

F The same month — June 2010 — that Rosatom signed its deal for a majority stake in Uranium One, Bill Clinton was paid $500,000 to give a speech in Moscow. He was paid by Renaissance Capital, a Russian investment bank with ties to the Kremlin.

G A Swedish organization donates $26 million to the Clinton Foundation even as Hillary’s State Department weighs sanctions against Swedish business concerns for dealing with Iran. In the end, no companies were cited for wrongdoing.

H The Clintons have pocketed at least $35 million since 2001 from speeches to financial services, real estate and insurance companies. Hillary has banked another $35 million in campaign contributions since 2000 from the same industries.

I A Canadian governmental organization called the Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development Agency contributes $480,000 to the Clinton Foundation after vocally calling for construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline that would carry oil from Canada, across America, to the Gulf of Mexico. Hillary Clinton has expressed support for the pipeline.

J Four days after Hillary is nominated as secretary of state in 2009, TD Bank — one of Keystone XL’s largest shareholders — hires Bill Clinton for the first of a string of speeches for which he’d get paid $2 million in all.

K The Norwegian government reports donating $89.6 million to the Clinton Foundation from 2007 to 2015. The foundation website, meanwhile, misstated that amount as between $10 million and $25 million

L A Nigerian newspaper publisher with ties to the Nigerian regime pays Bill Clinton $1.4 million for two speeches in 2011 in 2012. In 2012, Secretary of State Hillary makes an official visit to Nigeria against the wishes of Human Rights Watch and congratulates the regime’s brutal dictator, Goodluck Jonathan, on his “reform efforts.”

M Nigerian mogul Gilbert Chagoury donates millions to the Clinton Foundation and both Clintons’ campaigns. As secretary of state, Hillary refuses to name Boko Haram — a Nigerian jihadist group responsible for murdering thousands — a terror group.

N Procter & Gamble wins the Secretary of State’s 2011 Award for Corporate Excellence for its work improving education and health in Nigeria. P&G donated millions to the Clinton Foundation.

O The Saudi Arabian government — and organizations connected to it — has funneled tens of millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation. Secretary Clinton pushed for arms sales — in particular F-15 fighter jets — to Saudi Arabia. Those jets were later used in the bombing of journalists, ambulance drivers, civilians and Doctors Without Borders facilities in Saudi Arabia’s air campaign in Yemen, rights groups said.

P-R Gulf States Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates all contribute millions to the Clinton Foundation.

S Hillary’s brother Tony Rodham is named to the board of Haitian company VCS Mining. VCS wins lucrative mining concessions from the Haitian government. Hillary steers $4 billion in U.S. aid to the island nation since 2010.

T Frank Giustra commits $100 million to Clinton Foundation in 2007. That year his pipeline company Pacific Rubiales inks a contract with a state-owned energy company in Colombia. Hillary flip-flops on U.S.-Colombian free trade agreements

U Since 2006, the Australian government paid $75 million to the Clinton Foundation to administer programs in Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Vietnam.

V American “cut outs” are used to funnel Chinese mainland money to the Democratic National Committee to support Bill Clinton’s presidential agenda — and in violation of campaign finance laws.

posted September 22, 2016 12:20 AM            

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Originally posted by jwhop:
Actually, that 10% of Clinton Foundation money that ever gets to recipients for which the Foundation was supposed to be organized is OVERSTATED.

From IRS filing by the Clinton Foundation, the actual number is less than 6%! Right from Internal Revenue tax returns filed by the Clinton Foundation!

So, where did the money paid into the Clinton Foundation and into the bank accounts of Bill and Hill come from?

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No, you just don't know how to read tax returns. That figure came from Carly Fiorina, who also doesn't know how to read tax returns. The 6% myth has already been de-bunked.