Failure to make pledged 9/11 donations
An investigation by the
New York City Comptroller's office in October 2016 showed that Trump and/or the Donald Trump Foundation may have failed to honor at least one pledge to charities established to provide relief for victims of the
September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Trump had made a pledge of $10,000 to the Twin Towers Fund on
The Howard Stern Show in late September 2001.
[39] The Twin Towers Fund, later administered as part of the New York City Public and Private Initiative, was created by then-
New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani "to benefit the families of firefighters and police officers who died in the attacks.
[40]
During the
2016 Republican National Convention, Giuliani announced that Trump had made unspecified "anonymous" donations after the Sep 11 attacks, although such donations have not been identified.
[39] Giuliani also said, in support of Trump's candidacy, "Every time New York City suffered a tragedy Donald Trump was there to help,.... He's not going to like my telling you this but he did it anonymously.”
[39]
The New York City Comptroller's office told the
New York Daily News it had manually reviewed "approximately 1,500 pages of donor records of the Twin Towers Fund and the related entity NYC Public/Private Initiatives Inc., containing the names of more than 110,000 individuals and entities that were collected as part of the audits" through August 2012.
[41] According to the
News, Comptroller
Scott Stringer "found that Trump and [the Trump Foundation] hadn't donated a dime in the months after 9/11"; however, because the reviewed period only covered one year after the attacks, the Comptroller's office was "unable to conclude definitively" that Trump never gave to the fund after August 2002.
[39] According to its
IRS Form 990 tax filings, the Trump Foundation made no grants to the Twin Towers Fund or to NYC Public/Private Initiatives, Inc. from 2002 through 2014, although Trump may have made personal donations after August 2002 that would not have shown up in these filings.
[39]
In 2016, after the convention, Trump's campaign suggested that the Trump Foundation made a grant to the
American Red Cross after the attacks; however no record of this exists in the foundation's tax filings from 2001 through 2014. As with the Twin Towers Fund, if Trump instead had made a personal donation, it would not have shown up in the foundation's records.
[39]