How Eric Trump Created A Myth Around His Kids-Cancer Charity |
Hours before attending a state dinner with King Charles III, Eric Trump logged onto X last month to defend himself. The heir to Donald Trump’s financial kingdom had been telling investors that his publicly traded company could mine bitcoin for about half of its value, but a Forbes story had exposed that idea as a fantasy. In a five-paragraph response, the president’s son repeated his pitch, then shifted to something that had been bothering him for nearly a decade: a 2017 Forbes story about his kids-cancer charity. “This narrative—no different than when Forbes spent years attacking me for simply being a young kid who poured his heart and soul (with a record breaking 9.2% cumulative expense ratio) into saving dying children at St. Jude Children’s Hospital—is insane.”
The Eric Trump Foundation did some real good, pushing more than $25 million to St. Jude, the pediatric cancer hospital in Tennessee. Its model indeed lent itself to efficiency, focusing on fundraising while leaving more hands-on work to others. But Eric Trump’s organization also operated with a misleading sales pitch, sloppy accounting, conflicted board and unmistakable loyalty to billionaire Donald Trump, who, according to a former employee, made sure his for-profit business billed his son’s nonprofit charity. When Forbes first reported this years ago, the New York attorney general immediately launched an investigation. That was the last most people heard of it.
There’s more to the story. Thousands of pages of documents, obtained through a freedom of information request, show the depths of dishonesty underpinning Eric Trump’s sales pitch. He misrepresented how much his fundraisers spent to use his father’s golf courses, to bring in entertainers, even to supply auction items. From 2011 to 2016, Eric Trump’s organization moved at least $500,000 of charity money into his family’s properties through a series of transactions, most of which never appeared on the nonprofit’s tax filings and, therefore, remained out of the public eye—until now.
The documents also explain something that has long confounded observers of the first family: how the Trumps absorb scandal after scandal and emerge unscathed. Their strategy starts with a counterpunch, often over cable news or social media. Then it turns to defense, leveraging lawyers to bury paper trails. The Trumps bend and twist, changing practices just enough to evade serious consequences—without really budging. Then, once the legal heat passes, they emerge emboldened. They were treated horribly, they complain. They ask the public to trust them once again. Plenty do.
The Eric Trump Foundation has run this playbook beginning to end. Nine years after being engulfed in scandal, Eric’s rebranded nonprofit hosts an ever-expanding lineup of fundraisers, spending more than $500,000 a year. The events take place almost exclusively at Donald Trump’s properties.
Eric Trump, whose representatives did not respond to multiple requests for comment, began his charity with a group of well-off friends looking to do something good. “The first fundraising activity we have selected is a golf tournament,” explained an application that Eric Trump submitted to the Internal Revenue Service in 2007. “The foundation is fortunate in that our chairman’s family owns three golf courses in New York and New Jersey that we can utilize.” The charity promised it would sign no leases or agreements with companies helmed by its leaders.
For three years, it worked. From 2007 to 2009, Eric and his buddies hosted a golf invitational, spending about $50,000 annually and raising a few hundred thousand dollars a year, according to tax filings. But in 2010, things began to change. Trump Organization employees started populating the board. A year later, expenses soared to $142,000.
Ian Gillule, a former membership and marketing director at Trump National Golf Club in Westchester County, New York, pointed the finger at Donald Trump when speaking with Forbes nine years ago. “In the early years, they weren’t being billed [for the club]—the bills would just disappear,” Gillule said. “Mr. Trump had a cow. He flipped. He was like, ‘We’re donating all of this stuff, and there’s no paper trail? No credit?’ And he went nuts. He said, ‘I don’t care if it’s my son or not—everybody gets billed.’”
So everybody got billed.
After the 2011 event, the Trump National Golf Club sent the Eric Trump Foundation a $20,000 bill, a copy........