You want to provide that quote? Again, the violation of election law is minor and it's a violation of the charity not Trump's.
Actually, the plea deal (to which Trump agreed) specifically states that Donald Trump "breached his fiduciary duty" to the foundation (charity) and also "allow[ed] his campaign to orchestrate the fundraiser".
Here's a link to the actual deal
https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/nyscef/ViewDocument?docIndex=JLJih9v_PLUS_EKSuJs36THzexg==. I've read it, most of what you claimed is in there is not. Please point out the direct admission you just claimed. (I'll give you a hint, it isn't there, the judge made that up).
Those actions were attributed to Trump by the plea deal to which he agreed. By agreeing to the plea deal, that means Trump has accepted those descriptions as fact.
Actually, no it doesn't. The plea expressly says otherwise on behalf of the Foundation, and makes no such claims about Trump or anyone else. All the agreed to was that it "raised concerns" - which means reasonable people could disagree.
But I challenge you to look at it in detail and square it up with your original claim that Trump stole from veterans. The deal makes it crystal clear that nothing of the sort happened, that it's a series of largely technical violations. The primary "election law violation" is not in fact an election law violation it's specifically a TAX LAW and Charity law interaction. NY makes it illegal for charities to engage in conduct that incurs excise taxes, certain kinds of support of political campaigns incur excise taxes, ergo illegal.
Was there an excise tax associated with the Fund raiser? Not one bit. Hmm...
So the problem with the Fund raiser is not a legal violation of the specific law, or even that funds were stolen, or even that funds were misused. The "problem" as identified in the complaint was that a campaign used its funds to organize an event for a charity. Yes, you read that right. One could just as easily look at that as a donation by the campaign to the charity.
Then, of all horrors, Trump showed the "giant charity checks" at future campaign events. Totally behavior that we want to PUNISH!@!!
Virtually all of the remainder of the "infractions" were Trump using the Foundation to make charitable donations. Yep, to make charitable donations. He seemed to believe - a common view in the wealthy - that pledges make by his wholly owned entities or his family, could be satisfied by paying it out of the Foundation that he funded. That's the essence of a technical violation, easily rectified in any reasonable system and fixed on a go forward basis by having the Foundation do the pledge in the first case.
Remember the "tax law" issues that were the entire basis here, it looks like in total they ended up being less than $10k over decades of these minor problems (some of which the Foundation self reported).
This is from USA today, but Judge Scarpulla's text is quoted all over the place:In this week's ruling, Scarpulla wrote "that Mr. Trump breached his fiduciary duty" with statutory violations that included "allowing his campaign to orchestrate the fundraiser."
Yes, Scarpulla is known to be abrupt and a bit rude. Not a shocker. Still a misstatement of the agreement, and frankly not appropriate for a sitting judge.
That conduct, she wrote, resulted in "distribution of the funds to further Mr. Trump's political campaign."
By which she is referring to him giving actual checks to Veteran's organizations at campaign events. You'll have to walk me through why you think that is illegal or unethical. Frankly I think that's an absurdly untenable position.
The "technical" violation is that the Foundation wrote the checks - with funds it raised specifically to provide to veteran charities - to the veteran charities in a way that "could" be "seen as supporting" the Trump campaign, which again would be a potential violation of a NY rule that prohibits charities from conduct that could incur excise taxes (which support of a political campaign could do). Does this? Not a chance, to incur the excise tax the charity would have to make a donation to the campaign. To get there from what occurred you'd have to get the IRS to rule that there was an express dollar value of the publicity that should count as a contribution and levy the tax on that dollar amount.
Do you realize what that would mean to charities across the country? Any charity that could be deemed to be supporting a candidate or a party, even if not expressly and only just by coincidental involvement around an election, could be levied with a tax on a made up valuation of the publicity.
So no, that's really not a technicality - Trump funnelled money from a charity to his businesses and election campaign.
I can't give you any more excuses, you are now knowingly repeating a lie.
This is not at all equivalent to the reporting violations attributed to Obama's campaign, which were, as you pointed out, technical. Also, Obama, as far as I know, was in no way implicated in taking the actions for which the campaign was found responsible.
It's actually less of a violation that Obama's, Obama's campaign directly violated election laws, which are written specifically because of their potential to improperly influence elections. The Foundation, violated an interaction of tax and NY charity law in a manner that's designed to avoid tax consequences to charities, but that has little to nothing to directly do with elections, and involved ZERO dollars of inappropriate spending by the charity.
