The Clinton Foundation lists Donald J. Trump as a contributor with
a cumulative lifetime donation amount between $100,001 to $250,000. Tax forms show that the Donald J. Trump Foundation, which Trump controls,
donated $100,000 to the foundation in 2009 and
reserved a table at a 2010 Clinton Foundation gala for $10,000.
Trump’s gift places him in the top 0.2 percent of the foundation’s donors. Most of its
300,000 donors (85.5 percent) gave less than $250.
Breaking it down by dollar amount, however, Trump’s total contribution isn’t that big. We estimated that the foundation received at least $800 million in donations, more than 70 percent of which came from gifts of $1 million or more.
Trump doesn’t deny that he donated to the Clinton Foundation. During the first GOP primary debate in August 2015, Trump voluntarily mentioned it.
“When they call, I give. And you know what? When I need something from them two years later, three years later, I call them, they are there for me,” Trump
said. “With Hillary Clinton, I said be at my wedding, and she came to my wedding. You know why? She didn’t have a choice, because I gave. I gave to a foundation that, frankly, that foundation is supposed to do good. I didn’t know her money would be used on private jets going all over the world.”
For the record,
the Clintons did attend Trump’s third wedding to Melania Knauss, but that occurred in 2005, four years before the $100,000 donation.
A few months later, Trump gave similar answers when asked to explain his charitable giving record.
“I did give to the Clinton Foundation. What I didn’t know is they’d be using it for private aircraft and things like that. The Clinton Foundation was helping with Haiti and with lots of other things, and I thought it was going to do some good work. So it didn’t make any difference to me,”
he said on Jan. 31’s Fox News Sunday. “Again, I was a businessman and it was my obligation to get along with everybody, including the Clintons, including Democrats and liberals and Republicans and conservatives.”