美国国家公共电台 NPR There's Really No Comparison Between The Trump And Clinton Foundations（在线收听）

There's Really No Comparison Between The Trump And Clinton Foundations

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In the combative presidential election in this country, even the charitable works of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have come under fire. The Clinton Foundation and the Trump Foundation have similar sounding names, but beyond that, they have remarkably little in common. And those differences might reveal something about each of the presidential candidates. Here's NPR's Joel Rose.

JOEL ROSE, BYLINE: Let's start with the difference in scale. The Clinton Foundation is huge and has hundreds of employees and a $90 million budget. The Trump foundation is fairly small. It has no full-time employees and a budget of $600,000. To charities experts, this is like comparing apples and oranges.

LARRY NOBLE: I think they're two very different types of charities.

ROSE: Larry Noble is a lawyer at the Campaign Legal Center in Washington.

NOBLE: One of them is very professionally run and does a lot of work. The other one is - seems to be a little bit more loosely run and seems to be more focused on Donald Trump.

ROSE: Still, both foundations have become political targets in this election cycle. Here's Republican Mike Pence during the vice presidential debate earlier this month, arguing that the Clinton Foundation is basically a slush fund for its founders.

(SOUNDBITE OF VICE PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE)

MIKE PENCE: Less than 10 cents on the dollar in the Clinton Foundation has gone to charitable causes.

ROSE: But that statement is misleading, according to Larry Noble with the Campaign Legal Center.

NOBLE: It's based on a misunderstanding, either intentional or unintentional, of what type of charitable foundation it is.

ROSE: The Clinton Foundation is what's known as a public charity. That means it mostly raises money from other people and foundations, including a $100,000 gift from the Trump Foundation a few years ago. The Clinton Foundation spends that money on things like HIV and malaria prevention in Africa. It spends close to 90 cents of every dollar it gets on charitable causes and earns top marks from watchdog groups. But there's another criticism of the foundation, one that Trump himself has raised on the campaign trail.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

DONALD TRUMP: Her foundation took in large payments from major corporations and wealthy individuals, foreign and domestic. And all the while, she was secretary of state.

ROSE: It's true that the Clinton Foundation accepts money from wealthy donors, both inside the U.S. and out. Emails between the staff at the Clinton Foundation and the State Department show some of those donors wanted access to Hillary Clinton and that she did take meetings with them as secretary of state. But there's no evidence that big donors got any special favors from the State Department. Still, Larry Noble at the Campaign Legal Center says appearances matter.

NOBLE: Because we're talking about government officials. And the concern is that, when they get a large contribution, it will influence the decision they make. Even if, as secretary of state, she did not concern herself at all with what big donors wanted, people will think that it, in fact, did influence her. And it undercuts the credibility of decisions.

ROSE: Noble and other charities experts have an entirely different set of concerns about the Trump foundation - concerns that go beyond appearances. Pamela Mann is a former head of the charities bureau in the New York attorney general's office who is now in private practice.

PAMELA MANN: The Trump Foundation has engaged in documented flagrant acts of violation. That's really different.

ROSE: The Trump foundation is organized as a private foundation. It was originally set up to give away Donald Trump's money, but Trump hasn't given any of his own money to the foundation since 2008. Instead, his foundation raises money from other donors, as it did at a fundraiser for veterans Trump held in January.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

TRUMP: We raised over $5 million in one day.

(APPLAUSE)

ROSE: But that got the Trump foundation in trouble because, technically, it's not registered to accept donations in New York, where it's based. This month, the state's attorney general ordered the foundation to stop fundraising in the state. The Trump foundation broke IRS rules to when it made a contribution to Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi in 2013. Trump's foundation has described that contribution as a mistake and says Trump paid a penalty to the IRS. But Pamela Mann, the former charity watchdog, is skeptical.

MANN: It suggests that they're not deeply concerned with playing by the rules. It's unclear whether that's because they don't know what the rules are or they are willfully ignoring the rules.

ROSE: There are also questions about whether the Trump foundation has spent money on things it shouldn't have, including two paintings of Donald Trump and a Tim Tebow football helmet. And there are allegations that Trump never delivered on his promise to donate $10,000 to help victims of the September 11th attacks. New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer, who supports Hillary Clinton, says his office pored over audited financial records for two big charities in the year following the attacks.

SCOTT STRINGER: We found no evidence Mr. Trump contributed. It's possible he gave anonymously or in other ways. You'd have to ask him. Our review found that Mr. Trump did not, in fact, contribute to these groups.

ROSE: The Trump campaign did not respond to requests for comment. All this leads Larry Noble at the Campaign Legal Center to ask whether Donald Trump is really as generous as he claims to be.

NOBLE: It looks like he's trying to appear that he's very charitable. But if you pull back the curtain a little bit, it looks a lot greater than that. You know, it fits into a narrative of him using the charity for purposes of self-promotion.

ROSE: Of course, critics of the Clinton Foundation argue that Hillary Clinton used her family's foundation to promote her own political ambitions. And Larry Noble agrees, but he says there's an important difference.

NOBLE: In the Clinton Foundation, it's really hard to deny that they are doing good work. I do think it's fair to say they may have been somewhat tone-deaf to some of the things they were doing. And I think that that does play into a certain narrative - and it's a narrative she's had to deal with anyway - about trustworthiness.

ROSE: But Noble says it would be a mistake to treat the allegations against the Trump and Clinton foundations as equivalent. The two charities are about as different as the candidates themselves. Joel Rose, NPR News, New York.