One of President Donald Trump's sons may have engaged in a brazenly insulting symbolic act against New York state investigators looking into his charity.
On Monday, Eric Trump's foundation, Curetivity, held a private party at the Trump National Golf Club in Westchester County, New York, according to Forbes. When the Forbes reporter tried to get into the event, he was turned away, with one security guard jocularly warning him that "you have pictures all over town up here" and that "they’ll be tackling you" if he tried to crash the party.
Curetivity, which used to be called the Eric Trump Foundation, became the subject of a New York state investigation after a June story in Forbes Magazine revealed that it had paid the Trump business empire, the Trump Organization, at least $1.2 million to use its facilities for events. That contradicted Eric Trump's claim that he was able to use his father's assets "100 percent free of charge." If true, it would have significantly increased the percentage of donors' money that would go directly to St. Jude's Children's Hospital.
The charity was also subjected to scrutiny for sending more than $500,000 to roughly 40 other charities, although a spokesman for Curetivity told the magazine that those donors were aware their funds would be sent elsewhere.
Eric Trump's relationship with his father has made for some interesting headlines over the years. If the indignity of being charged for the right to use his father's own businesses wasn't bad enough, in March, he embarrassed the family by accidentally admitting to sharing information about Trump's business empire with the president.
Even though President Donald Trump reassured the public that he would not follow his business empire, Eric Trump blurted out that he and his brother, Donald Trump Jr., did keep the president up-to-date on "the bottom line, profitability reports and stuff like that" on a "probably quarterly" basis.
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