More Questions Raised About Donald Trump's Relationship to Money: $150,000 from 9/11 Fund and a $20,000 Portrait of Himself

Donald Trump may be staying silent on Hillary Clinton's case of pneumonia for very good reason: The entire episode is serving as the perfect distraction from two more investigations published this weekend into the relationship between him and improperly used funds.

One investigation revealed that the New York billionaire took $150,000 in 9/11 funds intended to help small business owners recover from lasting damage and business loss that insurance did not cover. Trump, who routinely insisted the $150,000 was awarded to help recuperate expenses from helping others after the terrorist attack, was not being truthful, government documents show.

Records obtained by the New York Daily News from the Empire State Development Corp., the entity responsible for administering the recovery program, show that Trump’s company applied for funding for "rent loss," "cleanup" and "repair." Indeed, the program did not offer reimbursement for helping people.

Trump has long said that the $150,000 check from taxpayer funds was reimbursement for helping people in Lower Manhattan.

"It was probably a reimbursement for the fact that I allowed people, for many months, to stay in the building, use the building and store things in the building," Trump told Time magazine in April.

"I was happy to do it, and to this day I am still being thanked for the many people I helped," he said. "The value of what I did was far greater than the money talked about, much of which was sent automatically to building owners in the area."

"This is just yet another outrage in the consistent pattern he has of not telling the truth, and really showing almost every time he opens his mouth that he’s somebody that’s not worthy to be the President of the United States," Democratic Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey told the Daily News. "A lie about an issue around 9/11 is despicable."

Also on Saturday night, The Washington Post published an investigation into the fundraising and spending of the Donald J. Trump Foundation — the organization he founded in 1987 to give away some of the proceeds from his bestselling book, The Art of the Deal.

The investigation shows how the foundation transformed over the course of years from an organization that relied on Trump's wealth for what many considered to be good projects to a budget of other people's money with dubious end goals.

That included spending $20,000 of foundation money on a 6-foot-tall painting of himself.

The foundation has also claimed to the IRS to have made donations that the named recipients have never seen.

Nearly all of the Trump Foundation gifts are small — in the $1,000 to $50,000 range — The Post found. And nearly all are made to groups in Trump's business, political or social circles.

Earlier this month, The Washington Post reported that Trump paid a penalty to the IRS for a 2013 donation to a campaign group affiliated with Florida Attorney General Pamela Bondi with foundation money — an explicit violation of the law that Clinton running mate Tim Kaine said blurred the lines between Trump's for-profit ventures with his tax-exempt foundation.

"The foundation was being used basically to promote a moneymaking fraudulent venture of Donald Trump's. That's not what charities are supposed to do," said Kaine. "I hope there’s a significant effort to get to the bottom of it and find out whether this is the end."

However, it's not only the spending of the foundation that has raised red flags.

According to tax records, the last gift from Trump to the foundation was in 2008, and since then, all of the donations have been from others. Among them are professional wrestling executives Vince and Linda McMahon, who gave a $5 million gift, but it was unclear if the donation was spent the way they intended.

The Trump foundation and campaign did not respond to requests for comment.

Photo credit: Gage Skidmore via Flickr Commons