Trump's Inaugural Committee Paid $26 Million to First Lady's Friend

[demmiblue]

Source: The New York Times

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s inaugural committee paid nearly $26 million to an event planning firm started by an adviser to First Lady Melania Trump, while donating $5 million — less than expected — to charity, according to tax filings released on Thursday.

The nonprofit group that oversaw Mr. Trump’s inauguration and surrounding events in January 2017, the 58th Presidential Inaugural Committee, had been under pressure from government advocacy groups to reveal how it spent the record $107 million it had raised from wealthy donors and corporations.

Its chairman, Thomas J. Barrack Jr., a longtime friend of Mr. Trump, had pledged that the committee would be thrifty with its spending, and would donate leftover funds to charity.

But the mandatory tax return it filed with the Internal Revenue Service indicates that the group’s charitable donations included only an already publicized $3 million for hurricane relief, plus a total of $1.75 million to groups involved in decorating and maintaining the White House and the vice president’s residence.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/15/us/politics/trumps-inaugural-committee-paid-26-million-to-first-ladys-friend.html

[2naSalit]

1. K&R

[nycbos]

2. They are not trying to hide it anymore.

[Judi Lynn]

3. Getting the money then hiding the money. Old family tradition! Thank you, demmiblue. n/t

[niyad]

4. k and r

[iluvtennis]

5. Corruption through and through. GAH

[getagrip_already]

6. that is only $30M.... where did the other $70M++ go?

It certainly wasn't for the performers or the gala's.......

[DFW]

8. Maybe that was off the top as expenses before the $107 was left over n/t

[PatSeg]

9. That's for sure

Meanwhile, the money didn't just evaporate. There has to be a paper trail somewhere.

[FakeNoose]

11. Cheeto has already started his re-election campaign for 2020

He started it almost immediately after the inauguration. I'm sure that's where the "extra" money went, what was leftover from the inauguration fundraising.

That would be after he took out all the funds he could get away with .. ahem .. billing the campaign for.
You may call him a grifter, I call him a liar and a thief.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

7. big money, tiny inauguration

No mention of the amount of kickback.

Reckon lots of folks could put on a bigger party with a whole lot less zeroes on the check.
BYOB, y'all.

[FSogol]

10. Grifters gotta grift!

[DeminPennswoods]

18. +1

nt

[MBS]

12. STAGGERING corruption.

And the shamelessness. . . I've never seen corruption this extensive and this blatant and this pervasive at the national level.

[hedda_foil]

14. They make Teapot Dome seem like a molehill.

[MBS]

16. That's what I was thinking, too.

About 6 weeks ago, I drove by the church in Los Angeles that my father always dubbed "Doheny's Fire Escape," so that scandal was fresh in my mind. Doheny was a genuine slime ball, but small-time compared to what we're enduring now.

In 1921, Doheny persuaded his friend, President Warren Harding's Secretary of the Interior Albert B. Fall, in exchange for a suitcase with $100,000 in cash delivered to a Washington Hotel by Doheny's son Ned, to lease to Doheny's oil company large holdings of oil-rich lands owned by the U.S. Navy at Elk Hills in Kern County , California . Part of this deal included construction of storage facilities at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii , and an exclusive government contract for Doheny to ship the oil from Elk Hills to Pearl Harbor. . . .
The Teapot Dome scandal broke in 1924 with indictments of Fall, Sinclair, and Doheny. This resulted in a series of trials that lasted until 1930. Doheny's endowment of the construction of the beautiful St. Vincent de Paul church at Adams and Figueroa in 1924 was widely regarded as an effort to retain the good graces of the city and of the Catholic Church in the midst of the national scandal. The U.S. Supreme Court in 1927 invalidated the Elk Hills and Teapot Dome leases as having been corruptly obtained. Albert Fall was convicted of taking Doheny's bribe, but amazingly Doheny, tried twice, was acquitted of having given it. Doheny's first trial was on a charge of conspiracy. On his acquittal 400 Los Angeles supporters met his train and the mayor of lauded Doheny as a "great American patriot."

http://www.westadamsheritage.org/read/472

[hedda_foil]

17. Whew! It's a great story but, as you said, nowhere near as corrupt as the pit we're in now.

[dhill926]

13. and his dirt poor supporters....

cheer. Fucking morons....

[llmart]

19. Exactly!

They will probably also vote for him again if he's still around and not in jail.

They truly are ignoramuses. They really thought he was going to cut the waste. What a bunch of sorry assed suckers.

[gademocrat7]

15. Criminal behavior

Worst administration ever.