A lot of other wealthy people feel the responsibility to take some of the wealth they've been given and give back: to give a lot of money to a particular cancer charity or to a group researching some particular disease or their alma mater. We haven't really found anything like that with Trump.
Nonprofits such as the Trump Foundation are prohibited from giving political gifts.
Trump and his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, have both been criticized during their campaigns for activities related to their foundations.
IRS rules generally prohibit acts of 'self-dealing,' in which a charity's leaders use the nonprofit group's money to buy things for themselves.
Even when he was just a reality-TV star, Trump was the kind of star who got a cover story in 'Time.' But that wasn't true. The 'Time' cover is a fake. There was no 1 March 2009 issue of 'Time' magazine. And there was no issue at all in 2009 that had Trump on the cover.
Trump started his foundation in 1987 to give away the proceeds from his book 'The Art of the Deal.' It has no paid employees and a board of five: Trump, three of his children, and a longtime Trump Organization employee. They all work a half-hour per week, according to the foundation's most recent Internal Revenue Service filing.
Trump has made claims about himself - about his charitable giving, his business success, even the size of the crowd at his inauguration - that are not supported by the facts.
I started at 'The Post' as an intern in 2000 right after I got out of college.
The Trump people make it extremely hard to figure out what's going on with their businesses, so we've done things like try to figure out all the people, the charities who rented out ballrooms and hotel rooms, all the NBA teams that stay at his hotels, people that pay him a lot of money and have other choices.
I used to cover the environment, and it does have the advantage of the fact that when you call people up and ask them questions, their first instinct is not to lie to you.
You know how country music stars get an extra 10 years on their life when they go to Branson? Like you're washed up, and you go to Branson, then you can last another 10 years. That's what bashing the media does.
Once money goes into a charity, it is tax exempt, so that's a benefit you get. And in return, you have to use the assets of the charity to serve the public good. So if Trump is using this money basically to save his businesses, the money isn't helping people. That's a violation of the letter and the spirit of law.
I started covering Trump's charitable giving sort of by accident.
Trump is somebody who sees the media as basically his main constituency. So much of his self-worth and his image and his view of what the presidency should be about is the media and how he is reflected in the media.
The expectation with family foundations is that if your name is on the foundation, unless you're dead, it's your money that's being given away. And even if you are dead, it was your money before.
What I found in my research on Trump's charitable giving was that often he would promise something and then never deliver, but sort of go around with people believing he'd done this thing he's promised.
In a given year, the government may decide that farmers are growing more raisins than Americans will want to eat. That would cause supply to outstrip demand. Raisin prices would drop. And raisin farmers might go out of business.
The government simply waits for farmers to grow their crops - nine months of growing grapes, then two to three weeks of drying them in the sun. Then it takes away a part of that crop and stores it in warehouses around California.
So much about Trump is... mysterious and slippery. Everything in his business record, you had to ask him for the details. He made himself the only source. He would either not tell you, or he was often an unreliable narrator about his own life.
All of philanthropy is harnessing that urge to have your name on something, and using it for good.
