Forbes India – August 4, 2017

peter and maria hoey for forBes

evening performances from musicians

like Dee Snider of Twisted Sister and

comedians like Gilbert Gottfried:

“They did it for free.” So many

sponsors donated, in fact, that the

event invitation has carried enough

logos to make a Nascar team proud.

Eric Trump maintains that

“our ex penses on a tournament

that made us somewhere in the

$2 million range every year was

somewhere around 100 grand,” even

though his foundation’s tax records

show costs soaring to $322,000.

When asked for an itemised list

of expenses, the Eric Trump

Foundation declined to respond.

Thus it’s hard to figure out what

happened to the money. All the

listed costs are direct expenses:

Items like overhead and salaries

appear elsewhere in its IRS filings.

Even if the Eric Trump Foundation

had to pay the full rate for literally

everything, Forbes couldn’t come up

with a plausible path to $322,000

given the parameters of the annual

event (a golf outing for about 200

and dinner for perhaps 400 more).

Neither could golf tournament

experts or the former head golf

professional at Trump National

Westchester. “If you gave me that

much money to run a tournament, I

couldn’t imagine what we could do,”

says Patrick Langan, who worked

The eRIC TRUMP FOUNDATION

24 | forbes india august 4, 2017

Power Shift

The Eric Trump Foundation’s board started as a group

of friends with no clear business connections to the

Trump Organization. Within eight years, the boardroom

table was stacked with two Trumps, six Trump

Organization employees and one entrepreneur ready

to cash in on the Donald Trump presidential campaign

Independent board members

Board members financially dependent on Donald Trump

independent

board members

eric t

rump

2007

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