Trump Foundation got $150,000 for 2015 Ukraine speech
President-elect Donald Trump’s charitable foundation received $150,000 in exchange for a 2015 speech at an event in Ukraine, according to BuzzFeed News.
Victor Pinchuk, a large Ukrainian donor who has previously given money to the Clinton Foundation, gave the Trump Foundation a $150,000 speaker fee to have Trump appear at the Yalta European Strategy Annual Meeting in September of last year.
{mosads}According to the report, the money was given by the Victor Pinchuk Foundation, which also helped organize the event.
The head of the board of the Pinchuk Foundation, Thomas Weihe, confirmed that the payment was made in exchange for Trump’s video appearance at the annual event.
“The payment to President-elect Trump’s foundation was in support of video link appearance at a conference called Yalta European Strategy Annual Meeting, which the Victor Pinchuk Foundation and Yalta European Strategy (YES) — an NGO founded by Mr. Pinchuk — organize annually in September in Ukraine,” Weihe wrote in an email to BuzzFeed.
“Mr. Pinchuk had met Mr. Trump some years ago in New York, this is how the invitation for Mr. Trump to speak at the (Kiev) meeting came about,” he added.
According to the report, Trump’s presentation addressed the challenges facing Ukraine and their lack of support from Europe and the United States.
A former Trump campaign manager, Paul Manafort, resigned in August amid revelations he had worked with pro-Moscow politicians in Ukraine.
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