Your editorial, “Let’s prosecute bad-actors pretending to be do-gooders,” justifies a worthy action (prosecuting misdeeds by charities), with a wildly absurd comparison. The editorial ties both Clinton Foundation and the Trump Foundation as “lacking in integrity.” As a philanthropy professional with three decades of experience, this false equivalency is staggering.

The Clinton Foundation is a widely respected nonprofit that has saved millions of lives around the globe. Charity watchdogs give it the highest ratings, and it continues to do good work even after the election. The Clintons themselves have spent millions of dollars from their own separate family foundation, to support this work. It wasn’t until the campaign began that partisan attacks and fake news stories took hold – and even then, there still has not been any wrongdoing that has emerged. Your editorial cites one of these fake stories – that the foundation spent money on a hotel in Haiti. This is flat-out false. The truth is, after a devastating earthquake in 2010, the Clintons helped generate economic development in the country, which included private investors to a hotel in Haiti – not money from the foundation.

Compare that to the Trump Foundation, which (unlike the Clinton Foundation) doesn’t do any actual charitable work. Trump himself hasn’t given any money to the foundation since 2008. They paid a fine to the IRS for using the charity to make a political donation to a Florida state official who then dropped an investigation into Trump University (and now is up for a lucrative White House job). And after the election they admitted to the IRS that they used the foundation to benefit the Trumps personally – through lawsuit settlements and buying portraits, actions that are clearly illegal.

The Post shouldn’t fall for fake news or trumped up scandals. While I agree that charities deserve more scrutiny, there can be no comparison between the actual lifesaving work of the Clinton Foundation, and the admitted illegal misdeeds of the Trump Foundation.

Carolyn Cavicchio is associate director of the University of Denver Colorado Women’s College.

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