It’s possible that instead of being part of a series of payments made to former WWE employees in exchange for their silence on alleged affairs and misconduct, the latest $5 million in previously unreported remittances by Vince McMahon may actually have been made to former president Donald Trump.
That possibility was raised today by Brandon Thurston of Wrestlenomics, who dug into the circumstances around a total of $5 million in newly uncovered payments McMahon made in 2007 and 2009. Those came to light earlier this week in a WWE SEC filing, bringing the total amount of McMahon’s payments since 2006 to $19.6 million.
As Thurston explains, the amounts and dates match up exactly to money the WWE gave to the Donald J. Trump Foundation:
According to IRS filings, WWE spent a total of exactly $5 million in contributions to the Donald J. Trump Foundation in the same two years, 2007 and 2009. The records indicate the contributions came from WWE, and use its headquarters address, with no specific person named; the latest years-old comments from WWE’s media relations attributed the donations to Vince McMahon and his wife Linda McMahon, personally.
Thurston’s conclusion is that the money may have been compensation for two of Trump’s famous WWE appearances: the first at WrestleMania 23, for a Hair vs. Hair proxy match between Bobby Lashley and Umaga that led to McMahon having his head shaved, and the second for a short saga that saw Trump buy Raw (in fictional terms only) and sell it back to McMahon for double the price.
While there’s not necessarily anything below board about McMahon sending money to the Donald J. Trump Foundation in this manner, it does highlight one of the core issues for WWE that has come to light since his personal scandal first broke. Namely, that as a public company, its internal controls for expenditures by executives, and the reporting thereof, simply aren’t sufficient.
It’s an interesting twist to a story that seems to have an unending stream of new developments, even after McMahon retired from WWE. However, in this case it appears to be more of a curiosity than something that will make the scope of the original scandal worse.