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Ousted WWE head Vince McMahon paid $5 million to the now-dissolved Trump Foundation the same years the president appeared in WWE storylines.
McMahon has come under scrutiny over the past month after officials found he paid out $19.6 million in unrecorded company expenses.
The majority of that money was found to have been paid out to women who accused him and another WWE executive of sexual misconduct, but the Wall Street Journal now reports that two payments totaling $5 million also went to the Donald Trump Foundation.
Those payments were made in the same two years that the ex-president made appearances at WWE televised events, according to a recent securities filing viewed by the Journal.
An attorney for WWE now says the payments should have been labeled as business expenses because McMahon was the principal shareholder and the payments benefited the company, though he would not say how.
McMahon, 76, has since been ousted from the company he has headed more than four decades and built up to become wrestling’s biggest enterprise amid a Securities and Exchange Commission and federal investigation into his undisclosed payments.
He has not yet responded to the allegations against him.
Trump, meanwhile, has been forced to dissolve his Trump Foundation, which was initially created to distribute funds to charitable organizations, after the New York Attorney General found he was misusing its money to benefit his presidential campaign.
Ousted WWE CEO Vince McMahon, right, paid $5 million in undisclosed payments to the Trump Foundation, according to a securities filing
Those payments coincided with Trump’s appearances on WWE televised events. The two are pictured here at a news conference in 2009
According to the Wall Street Journal, the now defunct Trump Foundation received a total of $4 million in 2007 from WWE and another $1 million in 2009, coinciding with the ex-president’s appearances at WWE events.
In 2007, Trump cut in on McMahon’s speech at the Raw’s Fan Appreciation Night accusing the CEO of being selfish.
The feud ultimately played out weeks later on the pay-per-view event WrestleMania23, in which he and McMahon fought a proxy battle entitled Battle of the Billionaires, each represented by a professional wrestler.
The winner would get to shave the loser’s head.
But according to a person familiar with the contract negotiations at the time, Trump directed McMahon to send a $4 million appearance fee to his charity for the event.
Trump then had his associates review the contract to ensure that under no circumstances would McMahon be allowed to shave his head, even if Trump’s wrestler dropped dead in the ring.
Then after the former president’s wrestler won the event, Trump got to shave McMahon’s head on live television.
In 2007, Trump shaved McMahon’s head on live television after his wrestler beat McMahon’s
According to a person familiar with the contract negotiations, Trump’s people ensured there would be no way he would have his head shaved even if he lost. ‘Stone Cold’ Steve Austin is pictured here holding McMahon down as Trump prepared to shave his head
The proxy battle was dubbed the Battle of the Billionaires during WrestleMania23
He later boasted that his appearance had been such a huge success — drawing in 1.2 million viewers at home, while grossing $5.38 million in ticket sales — that McMahon agreed to give him an additional $1 million.
A lawyer for WWE, though, disputed that the $1 million was a bonus for his appearance.
‘Mr. Trump and WWE entered into a contract whereby WWE agreed to and did pay him personally an appearance fee of $1 million,’ Jerry McDevitt told the Journal.
‘At the same time, the McMahons made a personal contribution to the Trump Foundation of $4 million. There was no additional fee paid to Mr. Trump or any additional contributions to the Trump Foundation due to the success of the event.’
But about two years later, the Trump Foundation received another $1 million at the same time the ex-president appeared on WWE Raw in a storyline about him taking over the company before selling it back to McMahon for double the price.
Trump received a $100,000 fee for his appearance, the Journal reports, while ‘at the same time’ McMahon and his wife, Linda McMahon — a former Trump administration official — made a $1 million donation to the Trump Foundation that year.
The former president was later inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame for his appearances in 2013, and had previously sponsored a match in Atlantic City. He was also a regular in the crowds prior to his appearances on the shows.
Now, WWE executives say that even though the $5 million were listed on the Trump Foundation’s tax returns as coming from WWE, the money actually came from McMahon himself.
They said, though, that the payments should have been listed as business expenses because McMahon was a principal shareholder and the payments benefitted the company.
Trump has been known to direct his appearance fees to his organization, with tax returns showing Comedy Central gave the Trump Foundation $400,000 in 2011 — the same year Trump was roasted on the network by Seth MacFarlane.
In 2009, Trump returned to WWE in a storyline about him buying the company from McMahon, only to sell it back to him at double the price
Both billionaires have now found themselves under fire, with McMahon losing the company he has built over the past four decades and Trump having to dissolve his organization amid a fraud investigation.
McMahon publicly announced his retirement as CEO on July 22 after both the Securities and Exchange Commission and the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York launched their own investigations into the nearly $20 million in undisclosed payments.
In the aftermath, WWE said in a securities filing that its own internal investigation into McMahon’s payments found he paid $14.6 million in settlements he entered with women who have accused him of sexual assault.
It found he paid roughly $7.5 million in hush money to a former female wrestler who alleged he coerced her into giving him oral sex, and fired her after she refused further sexual encounters.
McMahon was also found to have paid a WWE contractor around $1 million after she came to the company with unsolicited nude pictures of McMahon that she said he sent her.
And a company spokesman told the Journal that a sexual relationship between a former WWE paralegal resulted in a $3 million settlement this year.
A friend of the paralegal has said the former CEO ‘passed her like a toy’ to John Laurinaitis, then head of talent at WWE, after he doubled the woman’s salary from $100,000 to $200,000.
The company spokesman insists the relationship was consensual.
McMahon’s wife, Linda, right, served in the Trump administration. She is pictured with Trump at Mar-a-Lago in 2019
But the investigation resurfaced a decades-old claim that McMahon raped Rita Chatterton, the WWE’s first female referee, in his limousine in 1986.
Her allegation was recently corroborated by former wrestler Leonard Inzitari, who says he saw Chatterton after the alleged attack.
He said he kept it a secret for decades in fear of being marginalized by McMahon and his family, who control the wrestling industry.
Inzitari, who went by the wrestling alias Mario Mancini, told Intelligencer: ‘I remember it like it was yesterday. She was a wreck. She was shaking. She was crying.’
Inzitari said Chatterton told him through sobs how McMahon ‘took his penis out,’ forced her to perform oral sex on him, then forced himself ‘inside’ of her.
He sued her and Rivera, alleging they were trying to bring him down and were spurred on by his enemies. The lawsuit was discontinued without either side winning.
McMahon has yet to respond to any of the allegations against him, but has said: ‘I have pledged my complete cooperation to the investigation by the Special Committee, and I will do everything possible to support the investigation.’
‘I have also pledged to accept the findings and outcome of the investigation, whatever they are.’
McMahon walked away from the company with $3.4 billion.
He is now being replaced at his company by his daughter, Stephanie, who has had a career as wrestler herself and is married to promotion star Triple H.
McMahon has now been replaced at the company he has headed for four decades by his daughter, Stephanie, right
The former president, meanwhile, was forced to dissolve the organization in a settlement with the New York State Attorney General’s Office, which alleged in a 2018 lawsuit that he misused the charity funds to further his 2016 presidential campaign, pay legal settlements and promote his real estate company.
Trump eventually admitted to misusing the nonprofit funds and was ordered by a New York judge to pay $2 million to charities as part of a 2019 settlement.
‘I am the only person in history who can give major money to charity ($19M), charge no expense, and be attacked by the political hacks in New York State,’ he tweeted following the settlement. ‘No wonder why we are all leaving!’
The longtime accounting firm for Trump later informed his company that a decade’s worth of its financial statements ‘should no longer be relied upon’ – and asserts it now has a ‘conflict of interest’ with the company.
It said in a letter that while there are not ‘as a whole, material discrepancies’ in the documents, that it is their ‘advice’ to no longer ‘rely’ on them.