AP Photo Trump Foundation admits error in donation to Florida attorney general campaign

Donald Trump’s campaign said Tuesday that a series of clerical mistakes is responsible for an apparent failure by Trump’s foundation to report a political donation on its taxes.

Trump donated $25,000 from his foundation, which as a nonprofit is not supposed to aid political candidates, to a group backing Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi in 2013. The money came under scrutiny at the time because Trump donated the money just days after Bondi said she was reviewing complaints surrounding Trump’s real estate school, Trump University.


But Monday, the good-government group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington also filed a complaint with the IRS because it says the Trump Foundation didn’t report the donation on its tax returns.

“The apparent failure to tell the IRS about this political activity makes matters worse and is something we’ve seen too many organizations doing lately,” the CREW complaint said.

Trump’s team said Tuesday it didn’t learn about the error until the complaint was filed, as first reported by The Washington Post.

The reporting issue was due to a “series of unfortunate coincidences and errors,” Trump campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks said.

The request for the $25,000 donation came from Bondi, not the group supporting her called And Justice For All, Hicks said. When the request came in, a clerk looked up the organization and mistakenly identified it as a Utah-based nonprofit by the same name, then issued the check from the Trump Foundation, she said.

After that, an accountant mistakenly entered the donation on its tax filing as going to a different, Kansas-based nonprofit called Justice for All, Hicks said.

“My understanding is the foundation has been in touch with the IRS and proper adjustments are being made,” she added.

But the good-government group wasn't placated.

“If you violated the law by accident, you still violated the law,” CREW Communications Director Jordan Libowitz said. If the IRS were to investigate the donation, it could find the Trump Foundation violated its tax-exempt status.

“There’s so much going on here that the IRS really needs to investigate and find out where the truth was,” Libowitz said.

Bondi didn’t follow through on the Florida complaints about Trump University. The Florida attorney general’s office has said it received few complaints and wound up referring them to the attorney general in New York, which also filed a lawsuit against Trump University that year.

But earlier this month, Bondi endorsed Trump in his run for president.