Trump Lawyer’s Firm Steered Millions in Donations to Himself

Jay Sekulow, an attorney to President Trump, pushed poor and unemployed Americans to donate money to his Christian nonprofit while steering $60 million of those funds back to himself, his family, and his own businesses, according to an investigation by The Guardian. Telemarketers for Christian Advocates Serving Evangelism (CASE) were instructed—in contracts signed by Sekulow (and revealed by The Guardian)—to encourage even the impoverished to give a “sacrificial gift.” Then, CASE allegedly paid out tens of millions of dollars to Sekulow, his sons, his brother, his wife, his sister-in-law, his nephew, his niece, and their firms. The nonprofit also gave out a series of property deals and loans to their family, according to the report. The activity, according to experts, risks violating federal laws regarding nonprofits. “This is all highly unusual, and it gives an appearance of conflicts of interest that any nonprofit should want to avoid,” Daniel Borochoff, the president of nonprofit monitor CharityWatch, told the newspaper. A 2015 investigation by The Daily Beast found that Sekulow and his family profited handsomely through their conservative Christian charities.