Show Us the Money! Less Than Half of the $6 Million Trump Raised for Veterans Has Been Donated
Last January Donald Trump bowed out of the Iowa presidential debate due to his beef with Fox News, and held a fundraiser for wounded veterans instead. According to the Trump campaign, this event raised some $6 million, to be distributed to 22 listed veterans' charities. However, only $2.9 million has been donated as promised to 19 of the 22 charities, according to CNN.
Al Baldasaro, Trump campaign adviser for veterans' issues, couldn't account for the entire $6 million the Trump campaign raised. He claims he doesn’t know where the rest of the money went, and in essence, that it isn’t his problem.
“I could ask, but it’s not high on my priority list,” Al Baldasaro told the Daily Beast, adding: “I don’t track that. I’m not concerned about it, because I know [Trump is] an honorable, honest guy… you guys just want to say, ‘gotcha.’”
Baldasaro helped deliver money to one veterans' charity, accepting an oversized novelty check from Trump on stage at a campaign event before the New Hampshire primary. Soon after, he delivered a real $100,000 check to local veterans' charity Liberty House.
In early March, CNN was able to track down $2.9 million, citing the Trump campaign. In April, the Wall Street Journal traced $2.4 million of the funds.
“Groups that hold fundraisers for charities should distribute the funds to those charities as rapidly as possible,” Daniel Borochoff, the president of CharityWatch, told the Daily Beast. “By not doing so, it delays aid or assistance to people in need of help and increases the risk that these funds get diverted to something other than their intended use. A highly publicized event such as Trump’s fundraiser for veterans' charities ought to disclose within a few months what it has done with the funds that it has raised.”
