President Trump defended his scandal-scarred personal charity Wednesday, complaining that he was the victim of a “total double standard of justice,” a day after he agreed to fold it amid a probe into its finances.
“The Trump Foundation has done great work and given away lots of money, both mine and others, to great charities over the years – with me taking NO fees, rent, salaries etc.,” he said in the first of three tweets about the matter.
Trump complained he was targeted by state Democrats, including Gov. Andrew Cuomo, “in a long running civil lawsuit started by sleazebag AG Eric Schneiderman, who has since resigned over horrific women abuse, when I wanted to close the Foundation so as not to be in conflict with politics,” he continued.
Schneiderman resigned in May amid allegations of sexual misconduct and abuse. His successor, Barbara Underwood, brought a lawsuit against the foundation a month later.
“Shady Eric was head of New Yorkers for (Hillary) Clinton, and refused to even look at the corrupt Clinton Foundation,” he said, repeating an inaccurate claim that the then-attorney general led her campaign work in New York in 2016.
“In any event, it goes on and on & the new AG, who is now being replaced by yet another AG (who openly campaigned on a GET TRUMP agenda), does little else but rant, rave & politic against me,” he wrote, referring to Attorney General-elect Letitia James.
“Will never be treated fairly by these people – a total double standard of ‘justice.’”
Cuomo said the tweetstorm was “Trump being Trump.”
“I don’t know where you begin on that one … I had nothing to do with the AG’s disposition of this case. It’s just wrong,” the governor said on WAMC radio.
Cuomo said he hired Underwood when he was AG and described her as a “career professional,” not a partisan.
“I don’t even know what her political affiliation is,” he said.
Underwood announced Tuesday that both sides agreed to a court-supervised plan for the foundation to fold and distribute its remaining $1.7 million in assets to other charities.
Underwood sued the charity in June, alleging the foundation functioned as “little more than a checkbook to serve Mr. Trump’s business and political interests.”
She said her investigators found “a shocking pattern of illegality involving the Trump Foundation — including unlawful coordination with the Trump presidential campaign, repeated and willful self-dealing, and much more.”
The charity announced in 2016 that it would dissolve, before Underwood sued it along with Trump and his three eldest children — but the state blocked that plan until it could establish oversight of the closure.
Underwood said a lawsuit she filed against the charity would continue as her office seeks $2.8 million in restitution. She also asked a judge to ban Trump and his kids who run the charity — daughter Ivanka and sons Eric and Donald Jr. — from serving on the boards of other charitable institutions.