"This is an important victory for the rule of law, making clear that there is one set of rules for everyone," she added in a statement. Donald Trump hands a giant cheque to Support Siouxland Soldiers during a campaign event in Iowa in 2016, one of several illegal payments made using charity funds. Credit:AP The shuttering of Trump's charity comes after the Washington Post documented a series of apparent lapses at the foundation. Trump used the charity's funds to pay off legal settlements for his private business, to purchase art that decorated one of his clubs and to make a prohibited political donation. Trump denied that the organisation had done anything wrong. In late 2016, he said he wanted to close the foundation, but the New York Attorney-General blocked that move while its investigation continued. The settlement with Underwood's office represents a concession by Trump to a state investigation he decried as a partisan attack. The case is one of numerous legal inquiries into Trump organisations that have proliferated during his White House tenure.

Loading Alan Futerfas, an attorney for the Trump Organisation, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In a court filing in New York, Underwood said that the foundation's remaining $US1.75 million would be distributed to other charities approved by her office and a state judge. The lawsuit alleges that Trump used the charity's money as his own piggy bank – including using it to help his presidential campaign by paying for giveaways at Iowa rallies. "The Foundation was little more than a chequebook for payments to not-for-profits from Mr Trump or the Trump Organisation," Underwood wrote in the initial suit.

The Trump Foundation was never the most impressive part of Trump's portfolio: At its peak in 2009, the charity had only about $US3.2 million in the bank, a small sum for a billionaire's charity. The real estate mogul used other people's donations to build up the assets of the foundation. In recent years, the largest gifts came from the pro-wrestling moguls Vince and Linda McMahon, not Trump himself. Donald Trump's children Ivanka (right) and Eric (left) were on the board of the Trump Foundation but had never held a board meeting. Credit:Jeff J Mitchell Trump gave away the money in his name and also used funds from the foundation to pay his business' legal settlements. Federal law prohibits using charity money for personal gain. The Washington Post's reporting showed that, for years, Trump appeared to treat the foundation - which was, by law, an independent entity - as a chequebook for gifts that bolstered his interests.

The largest donation in the foundation's history - a $US264,231 gift to the Central Park Conservancy in 1989 - appeared to benefit Trump's business: it paid to restore a fountain outside Trump's Plaza Hotel. The smallest, a $US7 foundation gift to the Boy Scouts that same year, appeared to benefit Trump's family. It matched the amount required to enroll a boy in the Scouts the year that his son Donald Trump jnr was 11. Loading The Attorney-General's probe turned up evidence that Donald Trump jnr, Eric Trump and Ivanka Trump - all listed as officers of the charity - had never actually held a board meeting. The board hadn't met since 1999. The charity's official treasurer, Trump Organisation executive Allen Weisselberg, told investigators that he wasn't aware he was on the board at all. State investigators asked Weisselberg what the foundation's policies were to determine whether its payments were proper. "There's no policy, just so you understand," Weisselberg said.

At one point, Trump used the charity's money to make a $US25,000 political donation to Florida Attorney-General Pamela Bondi, a Republican. The charity didn't tell the IRS about that, as required - and instead listed that donation as a gift to a totally unrelated charity in Kansas with a similar name. Trump's team blamed accounting mistakes. During the 2016 campaign, state investigators allege, Trump effectively "ceded control" of his charity's money to his political campaign. He raised more than $US2 million at a fundraiser in Iowa that flowed into the foundation. Then, the state said, Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski determined when and where it would be given away. "Is there any way we can make some disbursements... this week while in Iowa?" Lewandowski wrote in an email cited in Underwood's lawsuit. Trump gave away oversized cheques from the foundation at campaign events in the key early-voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire, pausing his campaign rallies to donate to local veterans' groups. Federal law prohibits charities from participating in political campaigns. As president, Trump has called repeatedly for that law to be repealed.

The demise of the Trump Foundation still leaves one mystery unresolved: the fate of a large portrait of Trump that the future president bought for $US20,000 in 2007, using money from the charity. But what became of it after that is unknown. In 2017, after the Post wrote about the portrait, Trump listed it as an asset on his charity's IRS forms. He assigned it a value of $US700. But he did not say where it was. On this year's tax forms, however, the painting's value was listed at $0. Trump's attorney did not respond to a query from the Post about why. Washington Post