Well, this is crazy! Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump appears to have said something about his personal finances that—get this—couldn’t be verified when reporters checked to see if what he said was true. What a world!
Specifically, Trump said last week that he was forgiving $45 million in personal loans he’d made to his campaign. The announcement came on the heels of headlines about how a big chunk of the money the Trump campaign was spending was going to Trump-controlled businesses; by forgiving his own debt, Trump thus eliminated the possibility that he would make money off his campaign by paying his loans back using other people’s donations while pocketing the money that went to his businesses.
But there’s a twist! Unlike all the other things Trump has said about money that turned out to be totally true and easily confirmed, it turns out that there is no evidence that he has actually filed the Federal Election Commission paperwork that would forgive the loans in question. From NBC:
A week later, NBC News has learned the FEC has posted no record of Trump converting his loans to donations. The Trump Campaign has also declined requests to share the legal paperwork required to execute the transaction.
And:
The delay could matter, because until Trump formally forgives the loans, he maintains the legal option to use new donations to reimburse himself. (He can do so until August, under federal law.)
Shocking stuff. Sometimes it’s truly the people you trust the most, such as Donald Trump, who turn out to betray you in the end.
