New evidence exposes Trump's audacious campaign finance scam.
From his "charity" to his "university" to his campaign fundraising operation, Trump sees those who put their faith in him as suckers to be fleeced.
Donald Trump has an unusually ugly record when it comes to separating those he perceives as fools from their money. As we've discussed before, the Republican ran a fraudulent charitable foundation and created a fraudulent "university" that was designed to do little more than rip off its "students."But the scam the Trump campaign pulled off last fall was truly extraordinary, even by the former president's standards.The New York Times reported over the weekend on Trump's 2020 political operation and the brazenly underhanded tactics it employed to swindle its unsuspecting donors. The article began by featuring a financially unstable cancer patient in Kansas City, who chipped in $500 last September after hearing Rush Limbaugh talk about the Republican ticket's financial needs.What the hospice-bound patient -- making his first-ever campaign contribution -- didn't know was that Team Trump accepted the $500 donation, withdrew another $500 the next day, and then took another $500 once per week through mid-October. It wasn't long before the cancer patient's bank account had been emptied by the then-president's political operation, causing the man's utility and rent payments to bounce.This wasn't the result of an accident or a banking error. Facing a cash crunch and getting badly outspent by the Democrats, the campaign had begun last September to set up recurring donations by default for online donors, for every week until the election. Contributors had to wade through a fine-print disclaimer and manually uncheck a box to opt out. As the election neared, the Trump team made that disclaimer increasingly opaque, an investigation by The New York Times showed.
