David Fahrenthold:

Sure.

One of the sort of bedrock principles of charity law is that charities can't get involved in politics. They're — they're prohibited from participating in or aiding any political campaign. Most charities stay way away from that line because they don't want to get in trouble with the IRS.

What Trump did in this case, though, is, he used the Trump Foundation as kind of a prop for his campaign. In the last days before the Iowa caucuses in 2016, Trump held a big televised fund-raiser that was meant as kind of a counterprogramming for a Republican debate that he was skipping. He raised a bunch of money for veterans. And then that money from other people flowed into his foundation.

Then, in the successive days, when he was campaigning in Iowa, he would sort of stop his rallies in Iowa and say, OK, bring forth the local veterans charity that I have selected. Here's a giant check from the Donald J. Trump Foundation for $100,000 to this charity.

They would then say oh, Mr. Trump, you're so generous. And then, after they sat down, the rally would continue.

Basically, he used this charity as a way of bolstering two key aspects of his persona in that campaign, that he was rich, rich enough to give money away like nothing, and also that he cared a lot about veterans, because that's who got the money.

His campaign — I'm sorry — his charity, this theoretically independent entity, made all that possible.