Trumps and charities don’t go well together, especially children’s charities, although this is nowhere as bad as stealing from kids with cancer. It appears that the latest member of the family to grow philanthropical wings, Melania Trump, is in hot water for claiming that an event that she’s hosting in April will be providing charitable donations for kids to become educated in technological skills. The ads are out, the tickets being sold, but there’s no sign of a charity in sight.

That drew this response.

Um…so is this how you do it? You put together a gala bash, sell lots of tickets, collect the money and what about that portion going to charity — oh, darn, we forgot the charity!! Well, let’s fix that now. Let’s go out and find a charity. How intriguing that there was no rush to dot all the eyes and cross all the tees until she started getting investigated.

And the question that is still unanswered is? how much are the foster kids getting and how much is Melania pocketing?

Melania also made the news a few days ago because her “millinery masterpiece” of a white hat that was up for auction remained there unbought until she bought it herself. Or, at least, it appears that she bought it herself, because the money to pay for it came out of her digital wallet. VICE:

In other words, the winner of Melania Trump’s NFT got the money from none other than the creator of the NFT itself, and an address linked to the NFT creator got the money back.

Motherboard shared the blockchain records with pseudonymous independent blockchain sleuth zachxbt, who shared the following analysis confirming that the crypto for the winning bid was provided by the NFT creator:

If we visit Solscan.io (a Solana Blockchain Explorer) we see Melania Trump’s Head of State Collection, 2022 NFT was created on 01/11/2022 by 39ui using Metaplex.

01/23/2022 – 39ui sends 473,657.64 USDC to 3CTu.

01/25/2022 – 3CTu swaps 166,900 USDC for 1,816.08 SOL using Raydium (Solana decentralized exchange). A few minutes later 3CTu sends 1,799.5 SOL to 497Z.

01/26/2022 – 497Z makes a bid on the NFT for 1,800 SOL and wins the auction.

Later that day the NFT creator 39ui claims the 1,800 SOL and sends it back to 3CTu.

01/29/2022 – 3CTu swaps 1,800 SOL for 168,313.24 USDC using Raydium.

As of 02/08/2022 all of the USDC sits in 3CTu’s account and the NFT in 497Z’s account.

Given that the cryptocurrency for the purchase was provided by the NFT creator, and sent back to an address associated with the NFT creator, the only realistic option (assuming the mystery buyer story is true) is that the buyer does not use cryptocurrency and sent Trump’s camp dollars to complete the entire transaction with, which it did on their behalf. “Not impossible,” zachxbt said in a message, “but a weird request.”

But this doesn’t explain the bizarre chain of transactions and multiple wallets, including Address X (which zachxbt referred to as “3CTu”), which ultimately received the funds, or why the winning bid of a public crypto auction was facilitated by the creators of the auction and turned out to be the exact minimum amount.

“Why was 3CTu needed? Why would [the auction winner] send the exact amount for a winning bid? Why was the money sent back to 3CTu? All my unanswered questions…” zachxbt wrote.

Could the reason be that Melania didn’t want to look foolish auctioning off some treasure that nobody wanted and so it would just sit there, unless she made the appearance that it was in fact coveted and high money was paid for it? Just a thought.

And maybe the same motivation is running her children’s charity event in April? Maybe she had no intention of including children’s charities until she got busted, in essence. We’ll never know, but I think it’s safe to say that the charitable nature of the event was not first and foremost in her mind since she didn’t even bother to address that aspect at all until she came under investigation for it.

And this is vintage Trump behavior. New York Times:

In early December, Donald J. Trump put on a tuxedo and boarded the private jet of a scrap-metal magnate and crypto-miner for a short flight across Florida, touching down at an airport in Naples. There, a long red carpet marked the pathway into a Christmas-decorated hangar filled with supporters of Mr. Trump who had paid $10,000 to $30,000 for the privilege of attending a party and taking a photo with him.

The event had all the trappings of a typical high-end fund-raiser: a giant American flag, a lectern, chandeliers and an open bar. Frank Stallone’s band provided the music; an anti-Biden “Let’s Go Brandon” banner hung from the rafters.

But the money raised did not go to Mr. Trump’s political operation. Instead, Mr. Trump’s share of the evening’s proceeds went straight into his pocket, according to a person familiar with the arrangement.

Multiple attendees said they bought their tickets from a private company, Whip Fundraising, whose founder, Brad Keltner, has asserted that “the lion’s share” went to charity. But the website advertising the event listed no charitable cause. And Mr. Keltner, reached by phone, declined to discuss how money was distributed.

That’s how they do it in Trump world. Talk about charity, then pocket the money. Maybe Melania is getting more into money raising herself these days because she’s getting an inkling of how far down Donald’s fortunes could descend. Just a thought.

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8 COMMENTS

  1. Children. Veterans. Worthy causes which is why people named Trump have grifted using such people/groups to solicit donations. Remember back during the 2016 campaign when Trump got all pissy about having done an event (because he didn’t like the rules of a debate) “to raised money for Veteran’s groups” and some time later when a few (too few) journalists decided to check on whether those groups had actually gotten anything not one fucking dollar had been forwarded? He wound up GRUDGINGLY starting to pass along the money but I’m not sure he ever fully accounted for how much had been raised and how much went out. I’d be willing to bet he hastily came up with some exorbitant amount of “overhead expenses” so he could keep most of it!

    I suppose “Melanie” decided try the same stunt. I think an interesting question is whether Trump knew about all this and had demanded a cut of the action. I also think you might be correct about her worrying that she might not get her pre-nup payout when the time comes and is trying to get what she can while the getting is good. (Hard for her to collect her payout from accounts that have been frozen!)

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  2. The math involved in figuring out how much will be going to help children is unsurprisingly simple: the kids get bupkes. I imagine that little slob…I mean slav, paid some attention to the best ways to rip off the needy using charity scams. I mean sheesh she’d have to be a complete, uncaring, jerk to …..oh, wait a minute.

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