"The charity has basically become the Sarah Verardo Fund,"; #trumps favorite vet charity.......

[riversedge]

Trump is nothing but a selfish con man.

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President Donald Trump shakes hands with Sarah Verardo during a signing ceremony of the "Department of Veterans Affairs Accountability and Whistleblower Protection Act of 2017" in the East Room of the White House, Friday, June 23, 2017, in Washington.Evan Vucci/AP


Inside the Independence Fund, the Trumpiest vets’ group in Washington.

Jasper Craven 8 hours ago


On June 23, 2017, Sarah Verardo, now the CEO of a veterans’ charity called the Independence Fund, and her husband, Mike, a two-time Purple Heart recipient and double amputee, attended a White House bill-signing as Donald Trump’s guests of honor. Mike, a former infantryman in the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, told the crowd that a “new day” had dawned under the president. Minutes later, Trump cited the Verardos’ experience while he promised sweeping changes to the Department of Veterans Affairs. Then he signed the VA Accountability and Whistleblower Protection Act into law and gave his pen to Mike, who beamed.

Since he first ran for president, Trump has relied on the Verardos, and the 501(c)(3) charity that they’ve become the faces of, to bolster the perception that he is a staunch ally of veterans. In 2016, Trump invited the family to the Republican National Convention, where they watched the proceedings from a VIP box alongside his family. Six days before the election, Mike Verardo endorsed Trump in a front-page story in the New York Times. “I think [Trump’s] genuine,” he observed. Days later, veterans backed Trump by large margins, which played a key role in his wins in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin...........................................................


...................In turn, the president has boosted Sarah’s and Mike’s individual profiles and helped transform the Independence Fund, or TIF, into one of the most influential wounded-warrior groups in the United States. During last winter’s White House tree lighting, Trump thanked Sarah for “uplifting our nation.” In a speech the year before, Vice President Mike Pence called her a “hidden hero.” Sean Spicer, Trump’s former communications director, sits on the charity’s board of directors. TIF officials have commanded outsize influence over veterans’ policy under Trump, enjoyed personalized attention on issues large and small, and secured government and diplomatic partnerships to prevent veteran suicide and help promote peace in Afghanistan.
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But according to internal charity documents and interviews with 30 current and former board members, staffers, and volunteers closely involved in the group’s operations, TIF’s positive public image obscures years of improper spending and dubious charity work. (Twenty-two of the 30 TIF officials I interviewed requested anonymity, citing either fear of retaliation or the nondisclosure agreements they signed.) After reviewing TIF’s publicly available tax documents, Stephanie Kalivas, an analyst at the watchdog group CharityWatch, described some of the group’s accounting practices as “suspect at best,” adding, “I’ve never seen such inconsistent 990 reporting from one charity.”


Although Sarah has compared TIF to a “disaster relief organization, fluid and on the ground,” she has quietly diverted TIF dollars to support her family’s lavish lifestyle, from a Disney World retreat to a personal nanny and first-class air travel. “The charity has basically become the Sarah Verardo Fund,” one recently departed staffer told me. “Sarah’s spending was breaking the organization,” another complained.


Trump will soon be out of office, but one of his many lasting legacies will be the years he spent bolstering organizations and personalities whose tactics and ideology hew closely to his own. And while TIF’s history is marked by significant assistance to veterans, the organization has a distinctly Trumpist side............. ..........
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