New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. | AP Photo/Seth Wenig Schneiderman: 'Unfair' to single out Clinton Foundation for foreign donations

Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said on Wednesday that Donald Trump’s foundation is “responding professionally” to his requests to cease and desist fundraising activities in the state, and said calls for a similar investigation into the family foundation of Trump's opponent, Hillary Clinton, are without merit.

Earlier this week, Schneiderman’s office announced that the Donald J. Trump Foundation had agreed to halt fundraising, after attorneys in the attorney general's office determined the foundation was out of compliance with reporting standards. The foundation asked for an extension to file financial paperwork, including audits, that was granted by the attorney general's office.


“As far as I can tell, the Trump lawyers are handling things professionally,” Schneiderman told POLITICO New York after an unrelated event in Manhattan.

A Trump campaign spokesman had accused Schneiderman of being a “partisan hack" for investigating the foundation, saying it amounted to “nothing more than another left-wing hit job.” The two have sparred publicly in the past over Schneiderman's investigation of Trump's defunct real estate academy, Trump University.

Schneiderman said concerns about the Clinton Foundation's fundraising did not rise to the level of an investigation.

He said compliance issues with the Clintons’ foundation amounted to “ministerial, routines stuff” such as late filings or missing paperwork, and that the foundation “is properly registered and properly filed,” unlike Trump’s foundation.

Critics of the Clinton Foundation have called for an examination of the hundreds of millions of dollars from individuals who met with the then-secretary of state after either donating or promising to donate in the future, which included funding from foreign governments.

Schneiderman said that the rules for reporting government funds have not been found to apply to foreign governments.

“No New York State attorney general, Republican or Democrat, has ever interpreted that [rule] to require foundations to report on funding from foreign governments,” Schneiderman said. “We’re not in a position to check that out and enforce it. We leave that to our federal counterparts.”

For his office, the overriding concern is corruption that involves local or state funds raised by a foundation, Schneiderman said. He noted that other international foundations that operate in New York State, such as Doctors Without Borders and the Carter Library, also do not face scrutiny from his office over their foreign funding.

“It would be completely unfair to single out the Clinton Foundation,” he said.