The Donald J. Trump Foundation, established by the US Republican presidential nominee, has reportedly been collecting donations from charities and using them to benefit other charities in his name.

In fact, Trump has not personally contributed to his own supposedly non-profit foundation since 2008, when he “donated” $30,000 to the organization – $5,000 less than what he paid it the previous year,The Washington Post reported Saturday citing its own investigation into the finances of the foundation.

Trump’s foundation is “a charity that allowed a rich man to be philanthropic for free,” concluded the influential liberal newspaper affiliated with the Democratic Party. In 2007,  Trump used the foundation’s money to pay for a 6-foot painting of himself that his wife purchased at an auction, in violation of regulations by US tax authority, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), which prohibits a charity’s officers from using the group’s funds to purchase things for their own benefit.

Last week, the Post also reported that Trump paid a $2,500 fine for using the foundation to make a political contribution to a PAC supporting Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi in 2013, whose office at the time was considering an investigation into Trump University.

The foundation also misrepresented donations it made in the past and four charities that the foundation claimed it had donated to said they had never received any money. The Trump campaign has declined to comment on the report.

The development came as Trump took in an estimated $3 million at a single fundraising event on a farm outside Cleveland, Ohio, earlier in the week “The fact that people came in from out of town to go to that, I think said something,” The Hill reported, citing a source close to Trump’s presidential campaign.

According to the report, the controversial Republican presidential nominee has been slower to charm the donor class than any Republican nominee in recent memory largely because the billionaire spent the entire primary campaign telling rich conservatives he did not want their cash.

However, sources at the highest levels of Trump’s fundraising operation have described a turning point recently with Trump drawing closer to his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton in the polls.  The fundraiser was held on the farm of renowned GOP donor Eddie Crawford and attended by wealthy Republicans from the battleground state, the source said.

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US Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has finally overtaken his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton in terms of national support, after trailing the former secretary of state for weeks, a new poll shows. The Rasmussen poll, released on Friday, put Trump ahead of Clinton by a tiny 1-point lead, 40 percent to 39 percent.

Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson grabbed 7 percent support, trumping the other third-party ticket Green Party nominee Jill Steins, who only scored 3 percent. This marks a significant change from the survey’s last week edition, where Clinton led the New York businessman by 4 points, 42 percent to 38 percent.

In August, shortly after the Democratic National Convention, Clinton had scored 44 percent in the poll, her highest ever since. Clinton had dominated nearly all presidential polls over the recent weeks, following several missteps by the Republican nominee.

However, more recent polls have been showing a tightening race between the two candidates, with Trump managing to cut the former First Lady’s double digit lead in half.

A Reuters/Ipsospoll released last Friday, gave Clinton a 5-point lead over Trump, 41 percent to 36 percent, a 7-point drop for the Democratic ticket from the poll’s previous edition. Moreover, the RealClearPolitics average of polls showed Friday that Clinton was leading Trump by only 4 percent nationally.

Trump has been trying to refocus his campaign over the past weeks, laying out in detail his immigration plans and economic policies. He has also directed fierce attacks against Clinton regarding an email fiasco, as well as her allegedly declining health.

Clinton, on the other hand, has been trying to fend off criticism about the lack of clarity surrounding the Clinton foundation. Trump’s campaign has accused her of engaging in “pay-for-play” with the family foundation’s donors.

The organization has come under bipartisan fire for its foreign funding and the suspicious nature of its activities over the past years. In early August, newly released emails from Clinton’s time as the former secretary of state raised questions about possible links between the department and the Clinton Foundation.

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Supporters of both Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton are more motivated by fear about the other candidate getting elected as president than they are by excitement about their own candidate prevailing, a new poll finds.

The nationwide USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll found that 80 percent of Trump supporters and 62 percent of Clinton supporters say if the other candidate wins in November, they would feel “scared.” Only 29 percent of Trump supporters and 27 percent of Clinton supporters would feel “excited” if their candidate claims the White House, the survey found.

About 30 percent of Clinton supporters say they are mostly voting against Trump, not for her and about 40 percent of Trump supporters say they are voting mostly against Clinton, not for him.

“I believe the alternative of a Trump presidency would be disastrous, not just for our country but for the whole world,” says Carol Fisher, 56, a Clinton supporter and registered nurse from Teaneck, New Jersey. “I’ve never been so afraid of a Republican before,” said in a follow-up phone interview.

Noel Hartman, 64, a retired farmer and rancher Humboldt, Arizona, feels the same way about Clinton. “I know he [Trump] doesn’t say stuff right, but I’m so tired of being lied to,” Hartman says. “I’m hoping for change.” Unprecedented negative ratings for both candidates and fierce polarization between the two political parties highlights the challenges ahead for whichever candidate wins in November. The new president will face a significant number of voters who view his or her election as catastrophic for the country.

The poll also found that a majority of Americans hold an unfavorable view of both Trump and Clinton. The former secretary of state is viewed negatively by 51 percent of voters and the celebrity billionaire by 59 percent. About 20 percent of likely voters say they don’t like either major-party nominee.

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This is the day that 61 corrupt men threw away 54 million Brazilian votes in the garbage. Violence, unemployment and a very dark future for Brazil. Dilma Rousseff has been stripped of Brazil’s presidency following a Senate impeachment vote in Brasilia. Senators voted on Wednesday by a majority of 61 to 20 to remove Rousseff from office. She was convicted of breaking fiscal rules in her management of the 2014 federal budget.

The vote was enough to immediately remove Brazil’s first female president from office. Interim president, Michel Temer, who had run the country following the suspension of Rousseff in May, will be sworn in at about 4:00 p.m. local time (1900 GMT) in the Congress.

Temer is scheduled to complete Rousseff’s presidential term until the next scheduled elections in late 2018. The Senate had voted to suspend Rousseff in May. Following the Senate vote, Rousseff fired back by sending a tweet saying that “today is the day that 61 men, many of them charged and corrupt, threw 54 million Brazilian votes in the garbage.” Rousseff was alluding to her re-election in 2014, which she won with more than 54 million votes.

During a 12-hour trial session on August 29, Rousseff denied the allegations and called the impeachment a coup d’état. On Wednesday, senators held another vote on whether she will be deprived of public office for eight years after a ruling by Chief Justice Ricardo Lewandowski, the magistrate overseeing her trial.

The majority of the senators voted against preventing the leftist president from holding any public office for the next eight years. Only 42 of the 81 members backed the move to bar Rousseff from holding public jobs. Under Brazil’s constitution, a sacked president loses political rights for eight years and should be banned from holding any public job for eight years.

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