Power

Donald Trump Has Poured Money Into Anti-Choice Groups

A document created by the Trump campaign and obtained by the Washington Post details anti-choice giving from the leading GOP candidate.

Donald Trump’s charitable giving includes donations to anti-choice organizations, along with a crisis pregnancy center (CPC), according to his charity’s tax returns and a document provided by the Trump campaign and published by the Washington Post. Gage Skidmore / Flickr

UPDATE: May 11, 5:26 p.m.: The Trump Foundation reportedly erred in listing anti-abortion group Justice for All instead of another group, And Justice for All, in its 2013 tax returns. Justice for All reportedly told the Washington Post that the group never received a donation from the charity.

Donald Trump’s charitable giving includes donations to anti-choice organizations, along with a crisis pregnancy center (CPC), according to his charity’s tax returns and a document provided by the Trump campaign and published by the Washington Post.

In 2013, tax filings show the Donald J. Trump Foundation gave $25,000 to Justice for All, an anti-choice group targeting college campuses. The organization’s website describes Justice for All as a “non-profit educational organization which partners with local church communities to train followers of Christ to make abortion unthinkable.”

Amanda Marcotte, reporting for Rewire in 2009 on the group’s training materials, found that Justice for All instructed activists “to use deception to lure people into a conversation” about abortion before providing misinformation about those who provide and receive abortion care.

Justice for All has played a role in a string of lawsuits dating back to 2003 filed by conservative legal advocacy organization Alliance Defending Freedom on behalf of student groups who wanted to bring the group and its graphic anti-choice materials to their campuses. As Jessica Mason Pieklo reported for Rewire, after one such lawsuit at Oklahoma State University in 2014, “ADF argued that efforts to regulate anti-abortion student groups who wanted to display Justice for All’s materials was a violation of the First Amendment.”

Trump’s charity gave $10,000 to the Palmetto Family Council in 2011, according tax filings from that year. The organization hosted a Republican presidential forum in February. GOP candidates were asked to comment on videos released by an anti-choice front group called the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) alleging that Planned Parenthood had engaged in the sale of fetal tissue remains.

Though Trump did not attend the forum, he sent a surrogate who spoke out against abortion rights.

Other notable contributions include a $10,000 gift from the Trump Foundation in 2013 to evangelical advocacy group the Family Leader. The organization hosted a November forum in which Republican presidential candidates blasted “political correctness” for interfering with their factually incorrect attacks on abortion rights. Trump did not attend the event.

A document created by the Trump campaign and obtained by the Washington Post details even more anti-choice giving from the leading GOP candidate.

Though Trump’s campaign alleges that the Republican presidential candidate gave more than 4,844 gifts in the course of five years worth more than $102 million, analysis from the Post “found that the bulk of them were actually free rounds of golf, given away by Trump’s courses for local charity auctions and raffles.”

None of the gifts listed were made directly by Trump. Instead, many were made through the Donald J. Trump Foundation, his charity funded primarily through the donations of others but for which he decides how funds are distributed.

Among the “charitable contributions” listed was a 2012 gift of $100,000 from Trump’s charity to the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. The group’s website touts its opposition to abortion rights and their founder’s “instrumental” role in establishing Care Netone of the three major umbrella organizations of CPCs in the United States.

CPCs, supported by anti-choice lawmakers on the state and federal level, have been found to dole out misinformation about abortion. They are often staffed by people dressed in lab coats offering inaccurate and misleading medical advice to pregnant people.

Trump in 2014 gave $600 to the Choices Pregnancy Care Center, a CPC with two locations in Georgia, according to the document provided to the Post.

That document listed a 2015 donation of $10,000 to Project Veritas, a nonprofit claiming to do undercover investigative work. Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe has been roundly discredited for doctoring footage and committing criminal acts. O’Keefe is a known associate of CMP founder David Daleiden, who was indicted on felony charges in January in connection with his anti-choice front group’s deceptively edited videos.