The lawsuit seeks $2.8 million in restitution and additional penalties

NEW YORK(TIP): New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood sued President Donald Trump and his charitable foundation on Thursday, June 14 alleging that the president and his adult children illegally used it for personal, business, and political expenses.

The lawsuit alleges illegal activity that took place over more than a decade, including “extensive unlawful political coordination with the Trump presidential campaign, repeated and willful self-dealing transactions to benefit Mr. Trump’s personal and business interests, and violations of basic legal obligations for nonprofit foundations,” according to a statement from the attorney general’s office.

The suit accuses the president, along with Ivanka Trump, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., of violating multiple counts of state and federal law. The New York attorney general’s office began looking into the Trump Foundation in the summer of 2016, following an investigation by The Washington Post into the then-candidate’s philanthropy.

Barbara Underwood, the attorney general, asked a New York state judge to dissolve the Donald J. Trump Foundation and to ban Trump, his sons Donald Jr. and Eric, and his daughter Ivanka from holding leadership roles in New York charities.

Underwood said her office’s 21-month investigation, begun under her predecessor Eric Schneiderman, uncovered “extensive unlawful political coordination” by the foundation with Trump’s campaign, as well as “repeated and willful self-dealing” to benefit Trump’s personal, business and political interests.

Among the transactions the lawsuit cited as illegal was a $10,000 payment to the Unicorn Children’s Foundation for a portrait of Trump purchased at a fundraising auction in 2014, and $100,000 paid to another charity to settle a legal claim in 2007.

The lawsuit, in the Supreme Court in Manhattan, seeks $2.8 million of restitution, a 10-year ban on Trump serving as a director of a New York nonprofit, and one-year ban for his children.

(Source: PTI)