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The Morning Risk Report: Trump Foundation Hit By New York Lawsuit |
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Barbara Underwood, shown last month, succeeded Eric Schneiderman as New York state's attorney general. PHOTO: HANS PENNINK/ASSOCIATED PRESS
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Good morning. The New York state attorney general’s office sued President Donald Trump, three of his children and the family’s foundation, alleging that the charity was “little more than an empty shell” used for self-dealing.
Charities are barred from engaging in politics, and are generally not allowed to advance the private interests of their officers or directors. The lawsuit says the charity coordinated with Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign, and that Mr. Trump used its charitable assets to pay legal settlements and to promote his businesses.
“This is not how private foundations should function,” said state Attorney General Barbara Underwood. A Trump Organization spokeswoman called the suit “politics at its very worst,” and Mr. Trump himself called the suit “ridiculous” in a tweet.
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The lawsuit seeks to dissolve the foundation, asks for $2.8 million in restitution and asks to bar Mr. Trump from serving on the board of any charity in the state for a decade.
Among other allegations, it accuses Mr. Trump of raising more than $2.8 million in a way designed to influence the 2016 presidential election. It claims that five transactions it called self-dealing were illegal because they benefited Mr. Trump or his businesses and weren’t made for charitable purposes.
The Trump Organization spokeswoman said the foundation had already proposed its own voluntary dissolution more than a year and a half ago, before Mr. Trump took office. A statement from the Trump transition team issued at the time didn’t specify what would happen with the assets or how the team would shut it down.
A spokeswoman for Eric Schneiderman, New York’s attorney general at the time, said then that the foundation was under investigation and couldn’t legally be dissolved until the probe was finished.
The foundation had said it engaged in self-dealing in 2015 and in prior years, according to an Internal Revenue Service filing it made in November 2016.
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Cristina Cabella, IBM Corp.’s new data-protection officer, discusses the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation and building trust, the need for machine learning and those pesky consent emails.
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U.S. President Donald Trump approved tariffs on about $50 billion of Chinese goods,as the U.S. spars with Beijing over China’s alleged pressure on U.S. firms to transfer technology to Chinese partners, the WSJ reports. Trade officials planned to announce the list of goods subject to the tariffs on Friday.
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The affected Chinese imports would face 25% tariffs. The products are expected to be similar to those on a preliminary list released in early April. PHOTO: JONATHAN ERNST/REUTERS
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A banking regulator capped the amount of exposure the largest banks operating in the U.S. can have with one another, seeking to reduce the chance of snowballing credit risk in the financial system during times of crisis, the WSJ reports.
Swiss mining giant Glencore PLC said it would resume multimillion-dollar payments to Dan Gertler, a former business partner sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department for alleged corruption in the Democratic Republic of Congo, resolving a legal dispute that threatened to disrupt its operations, the WSJ reports.
AT&T Inc. Thursday completed its purchase of Time Warner Inc., hours after the Department of Justice decided not to request a legal delay while antitrust officials consider whether to appeal their court defeat, the WSJ reports.
A New York regulator threatened Thursday to revoke its approval of Charter Communications Inc.’s takeover of Time Warner Cable Inc., saying Charter had failed to hit goals for expanding broadband service that were a condition of the deal, the WSJ reports. Charter said it did meet the goals.
U.S. prosecutors have charged six current and former employees of Fitbit Inc. with possessing trade secrets stolen from rival company Jawbone. An indictment filed Thursday said the employees received the secrets after leaving Jawbone and knew they weren’t supposed to have them, the AP reports.
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Citing heavy investments in data security and IT infrastructure, Equifax Inc. named Bryson Koehler, a former IBM tech chief for Watson, as its chief technology officer, the WSJ reports. Last year, Equifax disclosed a data breach that compromised information on nearly 150 million U.S. consumers.
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Alphabet Inc.’s Google barely raised the proportion of women and underrepresented minorities among its ranks, while it got less white and more Asian over the past year, according to the search giant’s fifth annual diversity report. Google said it needs to do more on diversity, the AP reports.
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The power of big U.S. internet platforms poses a challenge for competition authorities in both Germany and the European Union, raising the question of whether intervention is needed, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said, Reuters reports.
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U.S. freight trains are now on track to stretch up to 3 miles long, with 200 cars or more, as a confluence of pressures—from the long-term decline of coal deliveries to competition from trucking to activist investors—forces railroads to improve efficiency and cut costs, the WSJ reports.
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Comcast Corp. and AT&T Inc. have made audacious moves to become media distribution and content conglomerates. Cable tycoon John Malone, one of the industry’s most powerful players, says he is skeptical of that approach and doesn’t plan to follow suit, the WSJ reports.
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John Malone said AT&T and Comcast face a challenge in deriving financial benefits from such deals. PHOTO: DREW ANGERER/GETTY IMAGES
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