WEBVTT - David Fahrenthold: Investigating Trump 0:00:04.920 --> 0:00:09.520 Hi, Brian, Hi Katie. Guess what, it's our last podcast 0:00:09.680 --> 0:00:12.200 of the year, and I'm kind of sad about that, Brian, 0:00:12.680 --> 0:00:14.920 I know, I know. But we're recording this a little 0:00:14.920 --> 0:00:17.880 bit ahead of the new year because you're going on 0:00:17.920 --> 0:00:20.800 a special trip. Actually, yes, I'm going to see my 0:00:20.880 --> 0:00:28.240 daughter who's studying abroad, So I'm going to Barry's studying Jackie. Jackie. 0:00:28.520 --> 0:00:32.000 She is in Paris, so I'm heading there actually momentarily. 0:00:32.159 --> 0:00:34.120 But I just want to say to you, Brian, I've 0:00:34.159 --> 0:00:36.960 really really enjoyed doing our podcast this year. Thank you 0:00:37.000 --> 0:00:39.479 so much for being a part of this and for 0:00:39.680 --> 0:00:44.120 sharing your wit and most importantly your wisdom about politics. 0:00:44.240 --> 0:00:47.760 Oh my god, well, thank you. Wait what just happened? 0:00:47.800 --> 0:00:51.199 I was just weirdly sincere for a moment. Thank you 0:00:51.280 --> 0:00:56.440 for allowing me to to blah brush aside greatness every 0:00:56.440 --> 0:00:59.760 other week for about an hour or so. Thank you 0:00:59.800 --> 0:01:02.360 and away. Well, of course, Donald Trump was the big story. 0:01:02.400 --> 0:01:04.880 We spent a lot of time talking about Donald Trump 0:01:04.920 --> 0:01:07.920 this year, so we wanted to spend the last podcast 0:01:07.959 --> 0:01:11.080 of the year talking about something new and different, right, Brian, Yeah, 0:01:11.120 --> 0:01:13.800 what is that, Katie? Donald Trump? And we're going to 0:01:13.920 --> 0:01:16.800 do that with a journalist who really held his feet 0:01:16.800 --> 0:01:20.760 to the fire during the campaign season. David Farrenhald is 0:01:20.800 --> 0:01:23.360 a reporter with the Washington Post. Many people are saying 0:01:23.360 --> 0:01:25.480 he might actually want a pulic surprise. I don't want 0:01:25.520 --> 0:01:30.000 to jinxis. But remember that Access Hollywood tape, Remember all 0:01:30.080 --> 0:01:34.440 the reporting on the Trump Foundation. Yes, I'm not mentioning 0:01:34.600 --> 0:01:37.000 you know the word because I don't. I don't know. 0:01:37.160 --> 0:01:39.560 I don't like that word, Brian, the p word that 0:01:39.680 --> 0:01:46.200 Donald Trump used. The Yeah, I tried to avoid that. 0:01:46.319 --> 0:01:48.640 Let's just say, yeah, he likes to grab him by 0:01:48.640 --> 0:01:52.440 the kiddies. How about that? That sounds gross too, But anyway, 0:01:52.560 --> 0:01:57.840 David Barrel broke these stories and reported fearlessly throughout the 0:01:57.840 --> 0:02:01.320 course of the campaign. But David became kind of Woodward 0:02:01.320 --> 0:02:04.200 and Bernstein all rolled into one at a time when 0:02:04.240 --> 0:02:07.440 a lot of people were just commenting on the poles 0:02:07.440 --> 0:02:10.840 and the horse race. He was really focused on trying 0:02:10.880 --> 0:02:14.840 to figure out who Donald Trump is, as revealed by 0:02:14.919 --> 0:02:20.239 his charitable contributions, his past comments, and really broke news 0:02:20.320 --> 0:02:23.240 about stuff that matter. That's right. He wasn't talking about 0:02:23.240 --> 0:02:24.839 the comment of the day, the news of the day. 0:02:24.880 --> 0:02:28.200 He actually did some serious digging and digging using a 0:02:28.240 --> 0:02:31.920 cool mix of twenty one century social media technology and 0:02:32.360 --> 0:02:36.200 little fashion gum shoe reporting and yellow legal pad reporting. 0:02:40.840 --> 0:02:43.720 David Farenthal from The Washington Post, thank you for joining 0:02:43.720 --> 0:02:46.280 our podcast. We're very excited to talk to you. We're 0:02:46.280 --> 0:02:49.640 going to be completely geeking out today. David. It's going 0:02:49.680 --> 0:02:51.800 to be all Trump, all the time. I'm glad to 0:02:51.800 --> 0:02:54.480 be here. First of all, I want to say congratulations 0:02:54.720 --> 0:02:59.000 on your extraordinary reporting this campaign season. I know you've 0:02:59.040 --> 0:03:02.760 been heralded for all your scoops, for many of your 0:03:02.760 --> 0:03:06.080 pieces that really got to the heart of issues in 0:03:06.160 --> 0:03:09.760 a in a era when people were covering really the 0:03:09.840 --> 0:03:15.000 superficialities of the horse race. So congratulations. There there Pulitzer 0:03:15.120 --> 0:03:18.560 rumors flying around. David. Um, you must be feeling pretty 0:03:18.600 --> 0:03:22.320 good about yourself right now. You know, I was looking 0:03:22.360 --> 0:03:24.079 at your bio by the way, and it occurred to 0:03:24.120 --> 0:03:26.040 me it took you about sixteen years to become an 0:03:26.080 --> 0:03:30.000 overnight sensation, So I think that's probably good to remember. Exactly. Yes, 0:03:30.800 --> 0:03:32.760 this time last year was writing about Jim Gilmore. So 0:03:33.080 --> 0:03:36.120 it's really been a pretty fast rise. Well, how are 0:03:36.160 --> 0:03:39.440 you feeling? Well? Good? I mean, the job that I 0:03:39.520 --> 0:03:41.440 thought was going to sort of be over on November eight, 0:03:41.520 --> 0:03:44.680 now continues on in a much more comprehensive way. So 0:03:44.760 --> 0:03:46.600 I'm trying to kind of get figure out what my 0:03:46.760 --> 0:03:49.560 niche is gonna be covering Trump the president, So it'll 0:03:49.600 --> 0:03:51.640 be some Trump charity stuff as well, but it's obviously 0:03:51.680 --> 0:03:53.840 got to expand because it's you know, He's there's a 0:03:53.840 --> 0:03:55.640 lot more to say, you know, before we talk about 0:03:55.680 --> 0:03:58.200 moving forward, because that's a big area I think we 0:03:58.360 --> 0:04:02.880 want to broach. How would you characterize covering this campaign? 0:04:03.120 --> 0:04:05.880 What was sort of your your true north as you 0:04:06.040 --> 0:04:10.240 set out to cover the Trump candidacy. Well, I felt 0:04:10.280 --> 0:04:12.119 like the way to cover Trump is not to write 0:04:12.120 --> 0:04:14.480 about his words, or not about his words only not 0:04:14.520 --> 0:04:16.800 about what he says, but about what he does. Uh. 0:04:16.920 --> 0:04:19.240 And the Trump is a unique candidate. And then he 0:04:19.279 --> 0:04:21.400 spends all his time sort of throwing out these things 0:04:21.480 --> 0:04:23.520 that I don't know if they're on, if it's purposeful 0:04:23.640 --> 0:04:25.360 or not, but they serve as a good distraction. Every 0:04:25.400 --> 0:04:27.640 day there's some new thing to chase, and the campaign, 0:04:27.680 --> 0:04:29.400 it was sort of a new outrage every day. He 0:04:29.720 --> 0:04:31.960 said and said things that would have killed off anybody 0:04:32.000 --> 0:04:34.080 else's campaign. But the way he did it. He would 0:04:34.080 --> 0:04:35.440 say them, and the next day, when we were sort 0:04:35.440 --> 0:04:37.520 of getting spun up to cover the first outrageus thing, 0:04:37.560 --> 0:04:39.400 he'd do another outrageous thing. We have just jumped onto that. 0:04:39.800 --> 0:04:43.200 So I wanted to cover his actions, the results of 0:04:43.279 --> 0:04:45.680 his actions, and in particular in this case, this really 0:04:45.720 --> 0:04:48.160 sort of important moral dimension. This is a guy bragged 0:04:48.200 --> 0:04:50.440 his whole life about how much he gave the charity, 0:04:50.480 --> 0:04:52.400 how generous he was. Let's go and see if it 0:04:52.440 --> 0:04:54.360 did he really keep those promises, and how much sort 0:04:54.400 --> 0:04:57.520 of moral compunction did he feel to help. He really 0:04:57.600 --> 0:05:00.760 put sort of a bull's eye on Trump's carrot. I mean, 0:05:00.839 --> 0:05:03.480 I think in a way that any great journalists would 0:05:04.160 --> 0:05:08.160 can use just reveal or review what you discovered in 0:05:08.240 --> 0:05:11.360 the course of your reporting. The main takeaway from me 0:05:11.560 --> 0:05:14.320 was that Trump understood that because he was rich, people 0:05:14.440 --> 0:05:17.440 expected him to be generous. That that's what rich people 0:05:17.520 --> 0:05:19.320 do have always been. That's a sort of part of 0:05:19.320 --> 0:05:21.280 the lifestyle of a rich person is giving to charity, 0:05:21.600 --> 0:05:23.719 and he wanted to have that appearance as much as 0:05:23.760 --> 0:05:25.400 he could. He wanted to have the the sort of 0:05:25.480 --> 0:05:27.880 the facade that he was a very generous person, but 0:05:28.000 --> 0:05:30.239 he did as much as he could to avoid actually 0:05:30.800 --> 0:05:34.160 doing the charitable work that that that illusion or that 0:05:34.240 --> 0:05:38.000 facade required. So often he would use other people's money 0:05:38.560 --> 0:05:40.280 as his own charities. He's find a way to convert 0:05:40.320 --> 0:05:42.960 other people's money into what seemed like his own charitable gifts. 0:05:43.200 --> 0:05:45.920 He would often promise gifts that he never gave. Even 0:05:46.080 --> 0:05:48.680 his own charity, that Donald J. Trump Foundation, he would 0:05:48.800 --> 0:05:51.280 use that in ways that basically where he was the 0:05:51.320 --> 0:05:53.640 biggest beneficiary, it looked like he was helping charity, but 0:05:53.720 --> 0:05:56.800 actually often he was helping himself. So that's that's what 0:05:56.920 --> 0:05:59.440 I learned. He knew that people expected him to be generous, 0:05:59.600 --> 0:06:02.440 and he need to meet those expectations on the surface, 0:06:02.520 --> 0:06:04.960 but didn't. I often want to comply with the sort 0:06:05.000 --> 0:06:08.320 of true moral dimension of charity, which is giving actually 0:06:08.400 --> 0:06:10.960 something of yourself to help others. So what actually spurred 0:06:11.040 --> 0:06:16.719 you to start looking into Trump's philanthropy or lack thereof, 0:06:17.160 --> 0:06:21.120 and and how hard was it to track down the 0:06:21.640 --> 0:06:26.040 contributions he did or didn't make. Well, it started actually 0:06:26.480 --> 0:06:29.640 kind of by Shant, So I spent all covering basically 0:06:29.760 --> 0:06:34.159 loser candidates George Pataki, Jim Gilmour, Rick Santorum, Rick Perry, 0:06:34.440 --> 0:06:36.000 they were all gone by the time we got to 0:06:36.040 --> 0:06:38.760 the Iowa caucuses where they were, they were all clearly 0:06:39.400 --> 0:06:41.440 hitted out the door. So I had nothing to do 0:06:41.600 --> 0:06:43.800 on Iowa caucus Day. And the report the editors said, Okay, 0:06:43.839 --> 0:06:47.040 go to Iowa, follow Trump around. We're gonna see this possibility, 0:06:47.080 --> 0:06:50.080 which didn't actually come to pass. This three time married guy, 0:06:50.200 --> 0:06:53.200 sort of play famous playboy is gonna win, we thought, 0:06:53.320 --> 0:06:56.200 the famously conservative and religious state of Iowa. So go 0:06:56.360 --> 0:06:58.640 see what he does on caucus day. So I went 0:06:58.680 --> 0:07:01.080 to this rally Trump did on caucus in Waterloo, Iowa. 0:07:01.440 --> 0:07:03.560 And during the rally, he got up. It was up 0:07:03.600 --> 0:07:05.599 on stage, and he stopped the rally and he said, okay, 0:07:05.640 --> 0:07:08.360 now come to the stage. Uh, this local veterans group, 0:07:08.400 --> 0:07:11.320 the this Waterloo Veterans Aid group. And in the middle 0:07:11.320 --> 0:07:13.400 of the rally, he gives them a giant check like 0:07:13.720 --> 0:07:15.440 one that they give to people who win win golf 0:07:15.480 --> 0:07:18.160 Tournament's a really big oversized check that says Donald J. 0:07:18.280 --> 0:07:21.000 Trump Foundation on the top, make America great Again on 0:07:21.080 --> 0:07:23.720 the bottom for a hundred thousand dollars. It turned out 0:07:23.760 --> 0:07:25.720 this was money that he had raised a few days ago. 0:07:25.960 --> 0:07:28.360 Do you remember he skipped a Republican debate because he 0:07:28.400 --> 0:07:30.080 was having a fight with Fox News and he had 0:07:30.120 --> 0:07:32.560 this big televised fundraiser race. He raised six million dollars 0:07:32.600 --> 0:07:34.560 for veterans, which included a million bucks out of his 0:07:34.640 --> 0:07:38.160 own pocket. So this is he's stopping his political rally 0:07:38.200 --> 0:07:40.760 to give away a check from his charity. Um, And 0:07:41.040 --> 0:07:43.000 I thought, Okay, I know you can't do that. I 0:07:43.000 --> 0:07:44.720 don't know much about charity law, but I know that's 0:07:44.800 --> 0:07:47.200 against the law. You can't use you the money and 0:07:47.240 --> 0:07:49.960 your charity to boost a political campaign, even if it's 0:07:50.000 --> 0:07:52.520 your own. Uh. So I came back from having covered 0:07:52.560 --> 0:07:54.320 Iowa and New Hampshire and I wanted to look into 0:07:54.360 --> 0:07:56.320 that to see where they'd broken the law. And there 0:07:56.400 --> 0:07:59.400 was another thing. He had said he'd raised six million dollars, 0:07:59.680 --> 0:08:02.080 but he only actually given out about a million dollars 0:08:02.120 --> 0:08:04.240 of these oversized checks and then he stopped. So I 0:08:04.240 --> 0:08:05.920 wanted to know, Okay, where's the rest of the money. 0:08:06.320 --> 0:08:08.280 And I thought at the time that question where's the 0:08:08.360 --> 0:08:09.880 rest of the money would take a couple of days 0:08:09.960 --> 0:08:13.679 to answer, because what political campaign would basically stiff veterans 0:08:13.760 --> 0:08:15.760 in the you know, in the middle of a Republican primary. 0:08:15.800 --> 0:08:18.920 Who would ever do that? The veterans contributions he made 0:08:19.280 --> 0:08:23.000 to catch people up were as part of an event 0:08:23.160 --> 0:08:25.280 to get out of a presidential debate that he didn't 0:08:25.320 --> 0:08:26.640 want to be part of. He said, you know what, 0:08:26.760 --> 0:08:29.840 instead of debating these you know losers, I'm gonna throw 0:08:29.920 --> 0:08:32.720 a fundraiser for veterans to which I'm going to contribute 0:08:32.720 --> 0:08:35.720 a million bucks of my own money. Basically, you're right. 0:08:35.760 --> 0:08:38.360 So he got a huge political goodwill out of that 0:08:38.440 --> 0:08:41.240 televised fundraiser and out of the idea that, look, isn't 0:08:41.240 --> 0:08:43.400 he amazing? He can raise six million bucks for veterans 0:08:43.920 --> 0:08:45.599 at the drop of a hat. He's so rich he 0:08:45.640 --> 0:08:47.400 can give a million bucks of his own at the 0:08:47.440 --> 0:08:49.640 drop of the hat. It's important to test and see 0:08:49.679 --> 0:08:51.559 whether he really followed through in those promises, because he 0:08:51.600 --> 0:08:53.319 got a lot of good will out of making so funny. 0:08:53.400 --> 0:08:56.160 This seems like such a no you know, a no brainer, 0:08:56.320 --> 0:08:58.800 doesn't it, David? I mean, you did something that most 0:08:58.920 --> 0:09:01.800 journalists should be doing. You've actually followed up right. You 0:09:01.880 --> 0:09:04.760 continued to cover the story and connect the dots. But 0:09:04.880 --> 0:09:06.920 the dots were harder to connect than I thought. Because 0:09:07.360 --> 0:09:09.880 I got back and said, okay, Trump, you know Trump campaign, 0:09:09.920 --> 0:09:11.160 Where did the rest of the money go? And I 0:09:11.200 --> 0:09:13.560 looked and looked at called the veterans organizations he named 0:09:13.600 --> 0:09:16.400 his beneficiaries. I talked to them. After a month, I 0:09:16.440 --> 0:09:18.880 could find about three million worth of the six million. 0:09:18.880 --> 0:09:20.360 I didn't know where the other three million had gone. 0:09:20.640 --> 0:09:22.199 And I kept looking, kept looking. This was kind of 0:09:22.240 --> 0:09:24.080 in the background while I was writing some other stories. 0:09:24.559 --> 0:09:26.880 Finally we get to May, so it's not been almost 0:09:26.960 --> 0:09:30.199 four months since the original fundraiser. Something really odd happened. 0:09:30.320 --> 0:09:33.040 Coral Lewandowski, who was Trump's campaign manager at the time, 0:09:33.120 --> 0:09:35.319 called me and he said, Okay, I can tell you 0:09:35.440 --> 0:09:37.720 what happened to that one million dollars the Trump said 0:09:37.720 --> 0:09:39.880 he'd get give out of his own pocket to veterans groups. 0:09:40.240 --> 0:09:42.079 He gave it away. But I can't tell you who 0:09:42.120 --> 0:09:44.160 got it, or in what amounts, or when or anything. 0:09:44.200 --> 0:09:46.640 It's a secret. But just know that million dollars has 0:09:46.640 --> 0:09:49.720 been given. At that point where you at that point 0:09:49.760 --> 0:09:54.000 where you also looking into Trump's other charitable giving. Had 0:09:54.040 --> 0:09:56.040 you broadened out yet or were you just focused on 0:09:56.080 --> 0:09:58.959 this one event. I was mostly focused. We've done some 0:09:59.000 --> 0:10:01.000 other stuff, but I was mostly focused on the veterans thing. 0:10:01.160 --> 0:10:03.160 Was there was such a concrete promise he had made 0:10:03.200 --> 0:10:05.600 in the in the context of the presidential campaign on TV. 0:10:06.000 --> 0:10:08.559 So I really wanted to focus on that um. And 0:10:08.679 --> 0:10:10.959 so after Lendowski says that to me, I thought, well, okay, 0:10:11.000 --> 0:10:12.520 I want to I want to see if he's right, 0:10:12.679 --> 0:10:14.199 you know, if you will tell me any details. I 0:10:14.200 --> 0:10:15.679 want to try to find some of this money on 0:10:15.800 --> 0:10:18.280 my own. So I used Twitter, knowing that Trump was 0:10:18.360 --> 0:10:19.959 on it, knowing that a lot of media were on it. 0:10:20.040 --> 0:10:24.320 I started sending out queries on Twitter to different veterans. Well, 0:10:24.640 --> 0:10:26.640 I thought, if in the old days before Twitter, you 0:10:26.640 --> 0:10:28.480 would just have to send out, you know, call or 0:10:28.559 --> 0:10:31.080 email a million you know, different veterans groups, and there's 0:10:31.120 --> 0:10:32.599 thousands of them, and you never would be able to 0:10:32.600 --> 0:10:34.439 reach them all. So, you know, the idea you could 0:10:34.480 --> 0:10:36.160 prove a negative. It's no way you could prove the 0:10:36.200 --> 0:10:38.400 negative dot Trump gave no money. But I thought, maybe 0:10:38.440 --> 0:10:40.520 I'll prove the opposite. I'll find a little bit of 0:10:40.559 --> 0:10:41.760 the money and we'll say, okay, well I found the 0:10:41.760 --> 0:10:44.440 tip of the iceberg. This must have been a real thing. Uh. 0:10:44.640 --> 0:10:46.640 And I sent us spend a day tweeting and nothing, 0:10:46.760 --> 0:10:48.800 no response from anybody. I couldn't find any of the money, 0:10:48.800 --> 0:10:50.920 and I thought at the end, yeah, I thought, okay, 0:10:50.960 --> 0:10:53.080 I've just wasted a day. I felt like the oldest 0:10:53.160 --> 0:10:55.000 man in the world. I was like, right, the Twitter 0:10:55.200 --> 0:10:59.079 didn't work. Uh, what a waste of time? Uh So 0:10:59.640 --> 0:11:04.040 what howen was Trump? Uh? He saw he was paying attention. 0:11:04.160 --> 0:11:06.160 And that night, the night that I had been making 0:11:06.240 --> 0:11:08.560 this search and not finding any of his million dollars, 0:11:08.880 --> 0:11:11.120 that's when he gave the million dollars away. So when 0:11:11.280 --> 0:11:13.800 Lewandowski told me he'd given it away, that was totally false. 0:11:13.840 --> 0:11:16.000 It was still in Trump's pocket. So how did you 0:11:16.080 --> 0:11:19.319 do the crowdsourcing? So you tried to Twitter and that 0:11:19.480 --> 0:11:22.480 didn't work so much, although it actually did because Donald 0:11:22.480 --> 0:11:26.000 Trump saw it. But tell us about crowdsourcing the report? Well, 0:11:26.120 --> 0:11:27.760 that was my first experience with it, and I was 0:11:27.840 --> 0:11:29.720 surprised at how well it worked. And then a bunch 0:11:29.800 --> 0:11:32.800 of media, a bunch of you know, campaign reporters, other 0:11:32.840 --> 0:11:35.640 reporters picked it up and started tweeting about it, spreading 0:11:35.679 --> 0:11:38.319 the reach and Veterans Group started started tweeting about it, 0:11:38.360 --> 0:11:40.520 and the idea had been okay, maybe I don't. I 0:11:40.520 --> 0:11:42.840 won't be able to query every veterans group in the world. 0:11:43.120 --> 0:11:46.000 But you know, somebody else watching this will say, well, hey, 0:11:46.040 --> 0:11:47.920 you didn't ask me directly, but you know he did 0:11:48.000 --> 0:11:49.640 give us this money, so and I could find it 0:11:49.760 --> 0:11:51.679 kind of by word of mouth that way. That was 0:11:51.720 --> 0:11:53.280 the idea, and it turned out and I thought, okay, 0:11:53.400 --> 0:11:55.200 my backup plan is maybe Trump will just tell us 0:11:55.240 --> 0:11:57.160 what he did. And it turned out to be that's 0:11:57.160 --> 0:11:58.719 what happened. Because he hadn't given it. There was nothing 0:11:58.760 --> 0:12:00.400 else to find. There was nothing to find at that point. 0:12:00.400 --> 0:12:02.000 It was all in Trump's pocket. So you kind of 0:12:02.080 --> 0:12:05.480 shamed you kind of shamed him into it in a way. Yeah, 0:12:05.559 --> 0:12:07.599 I guess. So I asked him that night. He so 0:12:07.720 --> 0:12:09.480 Trump called me. This is the last time he and 0:12:09.559 --> 0:12:12.360 I spoke. He called me in late May to say, okay, yes, 0:12:12.440 --> 0:12:14.360 I just gave the million dollars out. He gave it 0:12:14.400 --> 0:12:16.480 all in one fell swoop to this particular charity run 0:12:16.559 --> 0:12:18.880 by a friend of his, and I said, well, you know, 0:12:19.360 --> 0:12:21.960 could you would you have given this money out if 0:12:22.000 --> 0:12:23.800 I hadn't been asking about it? And he said, oh, 0:12:23.800 --> 0:12:25.800 you're really a nasty guy. You're a very nasty guy. 0:12:25.920 --> 0:12:28.120 That was his answer. Did he say sad with an 0:12:28.200 --> 0:12:31.000 exclamation mark? I don't. I don't find that he says 0:12:31.040 --> 0:12:32.960 that in conversation, but he does say nasty a lot. 0:12:33.000 --> 0:12:34.480 It was a weird interview because he would say, you're 0:12:34.480 --> 0:12:37.440 so nasty guy, and Hillary Clinton was a nasty woman. Yeah, 0:12:38.240 --> 0:12:40.560 I'm not definitely not the only nasty person. We should 0:12:40.600 --> 0:12:48.520 que Janet Jackson right now for some reason. But anyway, 0:12:48.559 --> 0:12:51.880 and then you started looking more broadly at what the 0:12:51.960 --> 0:12:55.400 Donald J. Trump Foundation has been doing or not doing, 0:12:55.720 --> 0:12:58.640 and in a nutshell, the answer would be, well, the 0:12:58.720 --> 0:13:02.240 Trump Foundation, he was giving money out of it, not 0:13:02.400 --> 0:13:05.360 in very large amounts, to charities, often charities that did 0:13:05.480 --> 0:13:07.160 business with him. You have to remember a lot of 0:13:07.200 --> 0:13:10.199 Trump's business at marl Lago and Trump Tower is running 0:13:10.200 --> 0:13:12.319 out ballrooms to charities who can pay like two it 0:13:12.440 --> 0:13:14.920 and seventy five thousand dollars a night to rent out 0:13:14.960 --> 0:13:17.839 Mara Lago. So they're his clients. So he was giving 0:13:18.240 --> 0:13:21.480 donations to these clients. But the money we figured out 0:13:21.600 --> 0:13:23.720 was not his, the money the Trump Foundation. He hadn't 0:13:23.720 --> 0:13:26.480 given the Trump Foundation a dollar since two thousand and eight, 0:13:26.559 --> 0:13:29.240 and had all been other people's money that he took 0:13:29.320 --> 0:13:31.640 in and then gave out. I mean, the one extreme 0:13:31.679 --> 0:13:34.199 example we found just amazed me. So okay. So there's 0:13:34.240 --> 0:13:38.080 this charity in in Florida, the Palm Beach Police Foundation, 0:13:38.360 --> 0:13:41.760 which is uh, they ran out Mara Lago for seventy 0:13:41.760 --> 0:13:44.240 five thousand dollars a night. Trump wants to give them 0:13:44.240 --> 0:13:46.960 a donation, but he doesn't use his money. He doesn't 0:13:46.960 --> 0:13:48.920 even use the money. And the Trump Foundation. He calls 0:13:49.000 --> 0:13:51.120 the foundation of a friend of his who has died 0:13:51.480 --> 0:13:54.360 and asked the friends surviving relatives, hey, listen, I'm raising 0:13:54.400 --> 0:13:56.320 money for the Palm Beach Police Foundation. Can you kick 0:13:56.360 --> 0:13:58.600 in someone? I say sure, but he says, don't give 0:13:58.640 --> 0:14:00.400 it straight to the Palmic Police Foundation. Give it to 0:14:00.480 --> 0:14:02.120 me and I'll pass it on to them. So they 0:14:02.160 --> 0:14:04.760 give him two hundred thousand dollars the Donald J. Trump Foundation. 0:14:05.040 --> 0:14:07.520 He just takes their money and gives it on, adding 0:14:07.600 --> 0:14:09.240 nothing of his own, gives it to the Palm Beach 0:14:09.280 --> 0:14:12.200 Police Foundation, and then Trump is recognized as a philanthropist. 0:14:12.280 --> 0:14:15.280 He gets a giant crystal palm tree as a reward 0:14:15.360 --> 0:14:18.000 for his grate philanthropy. When was all somebody else's money 0:14:18.120 --> 0:14:20.680 that's the sort of most director like Florence Johnson gave 0:14:20.720 --> 0:14:23.960 the money, but he gets the credit credit. Yeah. One 0:14:24.000 --> 0:14:26.760 of the strangest stories was the story of his portrait 0:14:27.240 --> 0:14:30.400 four ft tall or six foot tall portrait that was 0:14:30.440 --> 0:14:32.880 paid for by the foundation. Can you tell us the 0:14:33.480 --> 0:14:36.000 story of that portrait? Sure? So I've been calling all 0:14:36.040 --> 0:14:38.840 these charities the Trump Foundation had given money to just 0:14:38.960 --> 0:14:41.160 to find out a had Trump given them any money 0:14:41.600 --> 0:14:43.920 extra out of his own pocket? And also to find out, Okay, 0:14:44.000 --> 0:14:46.640 what was the money when the Trump Foundation gave this donation. 0:14:47.120 --> 0:14:48.920 Was it an exchange for anything or was it just 0:14:49.000 --> 0:14:51.880 a straight up gift? Uh? And so this particular group, 0:14:51.960 --> 0:14:54.680 this was I'd called three and five charities is choarity 0:14:54.800 --> 0:14:57.880 number three five? And they said, yes, that the Trump 0:14:57.920 --> 0:14:59.920 Foundation gave us twenty thou dollars. But it wasn't just 0:15:00.000 --> 0:15:02.560 a straight gift. It was a purchase. A Trump had 0:15:02.600 --> 0:15:05.400 gone to this event at Mara Lago, where the entertainment 0:15:05.440 --> 0:15:07.400 was a guy who was a speed painter. He paints 0:15:07.560 --> 0:15:11.000 portraits in like five minutes and then then auctions them off. 0:15:11.000 --> 0:15:12.600 So he painted a picture of Trump he auctioned off. 0:15:12.720 --> 0:15:15.920 Trump's wife Melania, was the only person willing to bid 0:15:16.040 --> 0:15:18.960 very much for it. She won it for twenty dollars, 0:15:19.200 --> 0:15:21.600 and then he paid with the Trump Foundation's money, and 0:15:21.720 --> 0:15:24.560 that is really puts him on thin ice with the 0:15:24.640 --> 0:15:29.240 I R S because that is not kosher. Well, basically, 0:15:29.320 --> 0:15:30.760 the I R S says that if you're a charity 0:15:30.840 --> 0:15:32.880 and you buy something, that has to be something that 0:15:32.920 --> 0:15:35.680 you're using for a charitable purpose. Right, Trump can't use 0:15:35.760 --> 0:15:38.360 his charity to buy something for himself or his business. 0:15:38.400 --> 0:15:41.480 So the question what the heck charitable purpose would there 0:15:41.480 --> 0:15:44.360 be in his six ft tall portrait of Donald Trump? 0:15:44.760 --> 0:15:46.440 And we never got the answer. Wh wouldn't she just 0:15:46.520 --> 0:15:49.320 pay for it from from their private We never got 0:15:49.360 --> 0:15:51.640 the answer. I thought in a number of cases that 0:15:51.680 --> 0:15:55.360 Trump's understanding of his charity was whenever he needed to 0:15:55.440 --> 0:15:58.600 give money to another charity, he would use the Trump Foundation, 0:15:58.960 --> 0:16:01.200 basically not understand ending that that's not how it works. 0:16:01.760 --> 0:16:03.440 That even though in this case the money went to 0:16:03.520 --> 0:16:05.560 a charity auction, and then we said we then we 0:16:05.680 --> 0:16:08.960 found this later another portrait, a ten dollar portrait also 0:16:09.000 --> 0:16:12.840 of Trump himself, that was also bought pay using charity money, 0:16:12.880 --> 0:16:15.120 and that we actually were able to trace to his 0:16:15.240 --> 0:16:17.440 golf resort outside Miami where it's hanging on the wall 0:16:17.480 --> 0:16:20.280 of the sports bar. So that's clearly a legal so wait, wait, 0:16:20.360 --> 0:16:23.000 so what so so there were two portraits, there were 0:16:23.040 --> 0:16:26.960 two portraits one and so whatever happened to the twenty 0:16:27.400 --> 0:16:30.600 dollar one? Is that in Trump Tower. All we know 0:16:30.960 --> 0:16:35.440 is that afterward the artist at Milania Trump's direction, boxed 0:16:35.440 --> 0:16:37.160 it up and shipped it to Trump's golf course in 0:16:37.240 --> 0:16:39.840 Westchester County, New York, with the understanding they would hang 0:16:39.880 --> 0:16:42.400 in the employee boardroom. I haven't been in the employee 0:16:42.400 --> 0:16:44.400 boardroom there. They won't let us in, they won't talk 0:16:44.400 --> 0:16:45.840 to us about it. So maybe it's there, and maybe 0:16:45.840 --> 0:16:48.960 it's somewhere else, but it was clearly Children's hospital. But 0:16:49.320 --> 0:16:51.440 the other one you tracked down though, and that was 0:16:51.560 --> 0:16:54.840 we're again. Trump has a golf resort called Durrell outside Miami, 0:16:55.720 --> 0:16:59.040 and so thanks to my Twitter followers, we found it 0:16:59.120 --> 0:17:01.280 hanging on the wall of the sports bar there. So 0:17:01.400 --> 0:17:03.200 that's you know, the charity paid for it, and it 0:17:03.320 --> 0:17:05.679 was used to decorate the wall of Trump's for profit business, 0:17:05.720 --> 0:17:08.399 which is like textbook self dealing text books. And you 0:17:08.480 --> 0:17:10.880 became kind of famous over the course of this reporting 0:17:11.400 --> 0:17:15.000 of sort of mixing Twitter with this old fashioned yellow 0:17:15.160 --> 0:17:18.400 legal pad that you used to keep track of how 0:17:18.520 --> 0:17:22.320 much money Trump was giving or not giving to charity. Um, 0:17:22.440 --> 0:17:25.080 how did the yellow legal pad become such a thing? 0:17:25.240 --> 0:17:27.160 You know, we had all these promises Trump had made 0:17:27.200 --> 0:17:29.200 to give money to charity out of his own pocket 0:17:29.280 --> 0:17:30.680 over the years, and I was trying to figure out 0:17:30.720 --> 0:17:32.840 if he'd done any of that, And so the Trump 0:17:32.880 --> 0:17:34.560 people wouldn't help me, and I try to think, Okay, 0:17:34.600 --> 0:17:37.320 well I'll try to again, trying to prove, not prove 0:17:37.359 --> 0:17:39.359 a negative, but proved Trump. Right, let me try. Let 0:17:39.400 --> 0:17:41.800 me go calling the charities that I think seemed closest 0:17:41.840 --> 0:17:44.240 to Trump, the ones most likely to have gotten his money. 0:17:44.440 --> 0:17:45.879 I'll call him and see whether they ever gotten a 0:17:45.920 --> 0:17:47.480 donation from him. And I knew it was going to 0:17:47.560 --> 0:17:48.879 be futile a lot of the time, that I was 0:17:48.920 --> 0:17:50.680 going to be calling and getting nothing, no answer. So 0:17:50.720 --> 0:17:52.920 I needed a way to make futility look interesting. And 0:17:52.960 --> 0:17:54.639 that's when I came up with that legal pad. Right, 0:17:54.640 --> 0:17:56.840 could take a picture and at one glance sort of 0:17:56.920 --> 0:17:58.639 show you how hard I was trying to find this 0:17:58.720 --> 0:18:00.920 money and how I was failing. We're gonna move on 0:18:01.680 --> 0:18:03.520 in a moment. But before we do, I have to 0:18:03.600 --> 0:18:07.720 ask you why you're reporting, as excellent as it was, 0:18:07.920 --> 0:18:10.920 didn't seem to resonate with with a many voters on 0:18:11.000 --> 0:18:13.399 election day when it came to Donald Trump and his 0:18:13.560 --> 0:18:16.680 use of charity dollars. I think people did care. I 0:18:16.760 --> 0:18:18.520 have sort of a couple of theories about this. One 0:18:18.600 --> 0:18:20.440 is that I don't think it was used very effectively 0:18:20.520 --> 0:18:23.960