TRUMP FOUNDATION TO CLOSE AMID LAWSUIT.

WASHINGTON • President Donald Trump has agreed to shut down his embattled personal charity amid allegations that he used it for his personal and political benefit and give away its remaining funds, the New York attorney general announced Tuesday.

New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood announced that the Donald J. Trump Foundation is dissolving as her office pursues its lawsuit against the charity, Trump and his three eldest children.

The attorney general’s suit, filed in June, alleged “persistently illegal conduct” at the charity and sought to have the foundation shut down. Underwood is continuing to seek more than US$2.8 million in restitution and has asked a judge to ban the Trumps temporarily from serving on the boards of other New York nonprofits.

Underwood said Tuesday that her investigation found “a shocking pattern of illegality involving the Trump Foundation — including unlawful co-ordination with the Trump presidential campaign, repeated and willful self-dealing, and much more.”

“This is an important victory for the rule of law, making clear that there is one set of rules for everyone,” she added in a statement.

The shuttering of Trump’s charity comes after a series of apparent lapses at the foundation. Trump used the charity’s funds pay off legal settlements for his private business, to purchase art that decorated one of his clubs and to make a prohibited political donation.

Trump denied that the organization had done anything wrong. In late 2016, he said he wanted to close the foundation, but the New York attorney general blocked that move while its investigation continued.

The settlement with Underwood’s office represents a concession by Trump to a state investigation he decried as a partisan attack.

In a court filing in New York, Underwood said that the foundation’s remaining US$1.75 million would be distributed to other charities approved by her office and a state judge.

The attorney general’s suit alleges that Trump used the charity’s money as his own piggy bank — including using it to help his presidential campaign by paying for giveaways at Iowa rallies.

“The Foundation was little more than a checkbook for payments to notfor-profits from Mr. Trump or the Trump Organization,” Underwood wrote in the initial suit.

The attorney general’s probe turned up evidence that Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and Ivanka Trump — all listed as officers of the charity — had never held a board meeting. The charity’s official treasurer, Trump Organization executive Allen Weisselberg, told investigators that he wasn’t aware he was on the board at all.

When state investigators asked Weisselberg what the foundation’s policies were, he responded: “There’s no policy, just so you understand.”