and i know that david fahrenthold was simply just reporting on the facts of what was going on. haven't heard from the clinton team or any democrat about this story that just broke. matt lewis, half a million dollars is a lot of money. $1 million is a lot of money. does it pass the smell test? >> it's a lot of money. you think the problem with this is the hypocrisy. donald trump ran to drain the swamp, ran against this sort of cronyism. having said that, i would push back a little bit and say, you know, that this is actually standard operating procedure. people give money all the time for access to politicians. when somebody gives money and barack obama comes to a fund-raiser, they are paying -- now, maybe they agree with him on the issues, maybe they want to support him or the candidate he's endorsing or maybe they want access to the president. so this is actually, i would say, not abnormal, maybe it's all too normal. >> but it is the swamp, right? >> exactly. >> but it is the swamp that's being drained? >> in this case, i would say the one caveat in addition to that would be,

our apologies, we had some audio trouble with david fahrenthold's video before the break. m back on the phone. we can hear him very well. david, key questions for our audience maybe to split it up. one, the foundation, was it really a charity in your reporting, and two, what exactly the attorney general's accusing him of here. let's start with that. did he donate money to this charity? did it do good things for people who need things? >> so it is technically a charity. trump had given it money in the past. he started it, but he stopped giving it his own money as you said in 2008 and it was all other people donating to trump foundation which he would then give their money away. so it was a charity. it gave to charities. but often to charities that benefited trump in some way. some charity that did businesses with him, rented out his ballroom, things like that. >> okay. so now let's look at what the new york attorney general is accusing him of here. what wrongdoing is the new york attorney general actually investigating with regards to the foundation? >> well, the basic thing

david fahrenthold, thanks so much.reciate it. >>> the president-elect has made his decision on who he wants to be the ambassador to israel. a man who has questioned the need for a two-state solution. we're live in jerusalem coming up. >>> plus president obama vows revenge for russian hacks but how? and what does that mean for the president-elect when he takes over that relationship in 30 plus days? (vo) it's the holidays at verizon, and the best deals are on the best network. with no surprise overages, you can use your data worry free and even carry over the data you don't use. and right now get four lines and 20 gigs for only $40 per line. you'll even get the iphone 7, the samsung galaxy s7, the pixel phone by google, or the motoz droid for only $10 per month. no trade-in required. hurry, these offers end soon. get the best deals and the best network, only on verizon. [and her new business: i do, to jeanetgo. jeanette was excellent at marrying people. but had trouble getting paid. not a good time, jeanette. even worse

david fahrenthold may take issue with that. spending months diving into the foundation and documenting hundreds of calls to charity after charity to find any who had benefited. he joins me now by phone. thank you for joining us. president-elect trump tweeted, 100% of my foundation's money goes to wonderful charities. what does that statement gloss over when it comes to what the money has been spent on? >> this is a really important point. it's sort of the most basic thing you learn when you start a charity, which is, if you are the charity's president, as trump is, you can't take the money out of the charity and use it to buy things for yourself or do things that benefit your business. there are a number of instances where trump spent money from his charity to benefit himself. he used it to buy two very large portraits of himself, including one that is hanging in one of his sports bars. he also used it to pay off his businesses' legal obligation. his businesses were in lawsuits and as a result had to pay money to charities. he

"the washington post" reporter david fahrenthold had a public way of reporting this, given the trumppaign at the time plenty of opportunities to confirm or deny that information. they never really did. so, this still exists. why it's important is because donald trump has still not addressed the issue of what he will do with potential conflicts of interests with his businesses once he takes office. he's supposed to have a press conference in january to address that issue. given the entanglements and so forth, the foundation questions also pertain to some business entanglements as well. >> that press conference was originally supposed to happen this month, but it was postponed into next month. i want to talk about what's going on up the street at the united nations. we know representatives israel's government says it's going to give the trump administration evidence that the obama administration orchestrated that u.n. security council vote. israel has not offered any proof, publicly. we have asked them, others have asked them, what does the trump response need to be in this case? >> we

david fahrenthold has done extensive research into donald trump's charity.nk you for jumping on. you've probably done the deepest dive into trump's foundation. what's your take on trump's comments on twitter overnight. is he right? >> he's right on one front, it's small. always been small. doesn't employ anybody. very small for a billionaires charities. only $4 billion or $5 billion at the most and gives most to charitiesies, but he's missing a key little point anyone that run as foundation knows. you can't use the money no your foundation to buy things for yourself or to help your businesses and trump did that on a number of instances. used the money to buy portraits of himself are and pay off legal obligation for businesses arising from lawsuits. in those cases the money went to a charity but did it to benefit himself or his businesses, and you just can't do that. >> apart from that, is part of the issue you ran up against and kind of anyone who wants to confirm what he has or hasn't done with his money through charity is he hasn't released his tax returns

david fahrenthold's reporting showed that his work involved the use of other people's money. joining us now, a professor at georgia state southern university, and yamiche alcindor. let's go to the obama versus trump presidential campaign. what is your theory of that theoretical campaign? who would win it? >> i can't say who would win it. what i can say is that obama of course is imagining himself as the change candidate, the candidate who really came out in 2008 and blew hillary clinton out of the water, so i think he's looking at himself as someone who be able to cap the hearts of americans. there are large counties that went for obama and switched to trump. that tells me that trump became the hot hand, the candidate that people saw as a change agent and the candidate that people thought were talking for them. and that was the working class people and people who really wanted something different in this economy. so i think it's really tough to say who would have won, but i think donald trump has a good backing in that he was able to kind of harness the obama way of doing thi

through the foundation, according to the great reporting of david fahrenthold paid for a giant portrait of himself. >> six-feet tall. >> is it? >> apparently. shorter than him. i guess it wasn't life size. >> i guess not. the point is, i'm sure it's done good, also some questions about how he has spent money from this foundation? >> no question. why it is under investigation, which is why it's not so easy to say i'm just shutting it down. you know, but i think that the bigger issue and the bigger question is -- whether or not this is a little bit of a teaser what could be to come? this is pretty small stuff. >> compared to the rest of his global empire? >> compared to the rest of his global empire, which is for-profit, which is, you know, obviously, all very legal when you are a businessman to be encouraging people to give you money for your product, very different questions about that to your point before, when you're president of the united states, and so that is "the" thing we have to focus on and get the answers oorn on, allegedly we'll do soon. only 20 days? >> at some point. appre

trump, or to political allies, as the "washington post's" david fahrenthold recently explained to the newshour. >> they gave to this group called "and justice for all," which was a political campaign committee helping florida attorney general pam bondi, who at the time, just happened to be considering-- her office was considering-- whether to pursue an investigation against trump university. they, later on, after the money came in, decided not to pursue that investigation. trump paid that money out of the trump foundation, which is against the law. >> reporter: finally, trump tweeted that his foundation "never paid fees, rent, salaries or any expenses." that is true: his children serve as the foundation's board, and the foundation is run by the staff of the trump organization, his business. now, that creates an efficient family charity, but has raised some serious questions. charities are not supposed to directly benefit or overlap with for-profit businesses like the trump organization, and that's one reason the new york state attorney general is investigating the charity. and all tha

but "the washington post's" david fahrenthold has been following all of this now for a year or more andeported that the trump foundation's largest-ever gift, about $265,000, was used to renovate a fountain outside the windows of trump's plaza hotel. fahrenthold also reported that according to tax records, the last time trump wrote a check to his own foundation was in 2008. since then, all of the donation have said other people's money. and in 2007, trump famously spent $20,000, 20 grand, to buy a six-foot-tall painting of himself, using money that was earmarked for charitable purposes. kasie? the foundation -- it's hard to know what to say about that. everything he tweeted last night is so easily refutable, i guess, is the first thing to say. >> well, there is that. and look, this is something that he took hillary clinton to task for throughout the campaign, is the conflict of interests and her charitable foundation. it was a favorite subject. and obviously something that she had to grapple with all the time. and he, of course, is now, in many ways, going back and doing a lot of the thi