Despite 2001 Promise, Donald Trump Made No 9/11 Donations in Year After Attack, Audit Finds
"We didn’t find evidence that he contributed a single cent," comptroller says.
— -- The New York City Comptroller’s Office has found no evidence that Donald Trump donated to 9/11 charities in the months after the attacks, the agency said.
Trump had promised weeks after the 2001 attack to donate $10,000 to the Twin Towers Fund as part of a charity effort by “The Howard Stern Show.”
“My office has reviewed the donations made in the nearly 12 months following the attacks – and we didn’t find evidence that he contributed a single cent to the victims, our first responders, and to our city through the Twin Towers Fund,” New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer, a Democrat, said in a statement to ABC News today.
“In the wake of 9/11, New Yorkers came together, healed, and rebuilt. If Donald Trump claimed to donate and didn’t, if he claimed to support New Yorkers in a time of crisis and refused, then that would be just plain wrong.”
It’s possible that the Republican presidential nominee donated after the two audit periods reviewed by Stringer’s office. The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
At the request of multiple news organizations, including the New York Daily News, which first reported the story, Stringer's office conducted a review of previously sealed records of the Twin Towers Fund and the New York City Public/Private Initiatives Inc., doing business as the Twin Towers Fund, which were set up in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks to raise money to support victims’ families, first responders and first responders’ families.
The New York City Comptroller's Office confirmed to ABC News that it had manually reviewed about 1,500 pages of donor records, containing the names of more than 110,000 individuals and entities that were collected as part of the audits. The audit of the Twin Towers Fund covered the period from Sept. 12, 2001 to Aug. 31, 2002, while the audit of the New York City Public/Private Initiatives Inc., doing business as the Twin Towers Fund, covered the period Sept. 12, 2001 to June 30, 2002.
Stringer’s office found no record of a donation made by Trump or a Trump entity in the year after the tragedy, contrary to the real estate developer’s claims.
ABC News' Rachel Katz, Candace Smith and John Santucci contributed to this report.