Former Philadelphia Gun Club president claimed his father was not a relative & to have urged Donald Trump to run for president
PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania––Showing Animals Respect & Kindness [SHARK] founder Steve Hindi introduced the existence of then-Philadelphia Gun Club president E. Bruce DiDonato, 71, to ANIMALS 24-7 on April 1, 2013, but what Hindi said was no April Fool.
“Dr. DiDonato,” Hindi assessed, “is a great example of a pigeon shooting psychopath––an individual lacking any apparent ethical or moral code. A real piece of work.”
Elaborated Hindi four days later, in an email to Showing Animals Respect & Kindness supporters, “Dr. Edward Bruce DiDonato poses as a decent human being. He runs a successful eye clinic, is on the board of trustees of Rider University, has lots and lots of money, goes to all the right parties, and has all the right friends. That’s the Bruce DiDonato everyone sees.
Convicted tax cheat
“The other Bruce DiDonato,” Hindi wrote, “is a cruel, lawbreaking thug who shoots pigeons tossed out of boxes, threatens people with his big SUV, covers his license plates, wears sunglasses in snowstorms to cover his face, and cheats on his taxes to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars,” as the U.S. Tax Court found on January 14, 2013, after extensively reviewing DiDonato’s 2003 and 2004 federal income tax filings.
Many disputed deductions involved pigeon-shooting and the Philadelphia Gun Club, for instance expenses claimed for “business meetings” held at the gun club.
In one instance, the U.S. Tax Court verdict narrated, one of Bruce DiDonato’s companies “claimed a $37,501 deduction for employee achievement awards,” of which the court “disallowed $21,501 of the $37,501 deduction for a firearm Bruce DiDonato purchased in the United Kingdom for £11,250 ($21,501) on February 10, 2004.”
His cousin Vinnie
The U.S. Tax Court verdict also disallowed deductions for numerous transactions between Bruce DiDonato and his cousin Vinnie, Vincent DiDonato, of DiDonato Builders.
U.S. Tax Court judge David Laro (1942-2018) noted that Bruce DiDonato “testified that his father, for whom petitioners claimed a dependency exemption deduction and listed their qualifying relationship as ‘parent,’ was not a family member for purposes of qualifying a property as a rental property.”
Taken at face value, this claim could be taken as an admission by Bruce DiDonato that he is a bastard. While many people might agree, in the metaphorical sense, Judge Laro did not accept this as a literal fact.
Told Trump to run?
Bruce DiDonato, according to CentralJersey.com in 2016, claimed to have been “at a fundraiser for then-U.S. Senator Arlen Specter in New York some years ago, when he talked to Donald Trump and suggested he run for president.
“I was invited and I went and had a nice chat with Trump and told him he ought to run for president,” DiDonato said.
Regardless of whether DiDonato planted the worm in Trump’s brain that inspired him to run, Bruce DiDonato was a Trump delegate to the 2016 Republican National Convention.
Now, according to a July 29, 2026 media release from the National Fraud Enforcement Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, Bruce DiDonato is facing “a seven-count indictment for his role in orchestrating diagnostic testing and kickback schemes.
“Billing for unnecessary diagnostic eye tests”
“According to court documents,” the National Fraud Enforcement Division media release detailed, “from at least 2015 through March 2023, E. Bruce DiDonato, 71, of Princeton, New Jersey, allegedly conspired with others to defraud Medicare by billing for unnecessary diagnostic eye tests.”
Bruce DiDonato, the National Fraud Enforcement Division media release continued, “allegedly paid kickbacks and bribes to ophthalmologists in exchange for their referral of patients who needed eye surgeries, and then subjected the patients to diagnostic tests that were duplicative of tests they had previously received or were unnecessary for the type of surgery being performed.
“As alleged,” the National Fraud Enforcement Division media release charged, “neither DiDonato nor [any other] optometrist reviewed the tests, and in most instances the ophthalmologists did not review or rely on the tests to inform their treatment decisions in advance of surgery.
“Kickbacks & bribes”
“According to the indictment,” the National Fraud Enforcement Division media release explained, “DiDonato concealed the payment of kickbacks and bribes by creating sham agreements that described the payments as consulting fees.
“DiDonato allegedly caused the submission of approximately $3.4 million in fraudulent claims to Medicare,” according to the National Fraud Enforcement Division media release, “of which Medicare paid approximately $1 million. DiDonato then marketed and sold Campus Eye,” one of several companies he created, “to private equity investors, based in part on the lucrative reimbursements he received from Medicare.
“DiDonato,” the National Fraud Enforcement Division media release enumerated, “is charged with one count of conspiracy to commit health care fraud, one count of conspiracy to violate the Anti-Kickback Statute, two counts of health care fraud, and three counts of payment of illegal health care kickbacks.
(SHARK photo)
Facing up to 25 years in prison
“If convicted, DiDonato faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison on the health care fraud conspiracy and substantive health care fraud counts, five years in prison on the kickback conspiracy count, and 10 years in prison for each of the substantive kickback counts.”
If, that is, Donald Trump does not pardon his old friend Bruce DiDonato, much as Trump has pardoned many other criminally convicted associates.
The Campus Eye company, the National Fraud Enforcement Division media release explained, will not be prosecuted, because DiDonato in 2021 sold 65% of the shares to two other investors, who eventually booted DiDonato off the board of the directors and sold the business.
DiDonato contested the ouster, losing his case in September 2024.
(LinkedIn photo)
Allegedly didn’t pay lawyer
At some point subsequent to that, Campus Eye “voluntarily self-disclosed the misconduct, fully cooperated with the Department’s investigation, and timely and appropriately remediated the wrongdoing,” agreeing “to pay back $1 million to victims.”
DiDonato previously came to the notice of ANIMALS 24-7 after longtime Philadelphia Gun Club lawyer Sean M. Corr on March 11, 2024 sued the Philadelphia Gun Club, DiDonato, and six other current and/or former gun club members and officers for allegedly using his services but not paying him from 2013 to 2016.
Exactly how much money Corr contended the defendants owed him was not stated in the legal documents obtained by ANIMALS 24-7, and is apparently still not public record.
Neither did the Corr lawsuit state how much money the Philadelphia Gun Club spent in defending itself against cases initiated by Showing Animals Respect & Kindness over cruelty to pigeons, or in suing Steve Hindi and Showing Animals Respect & Kindness in futile attempts to shut him up.
DiDonato lost “millions of dollars”
But the Corr lawsuit against the Philadelphia Gun Club did allege that the gun club pursued lawsuits against Hindi because it and DiDonato lost “millions of dollars” due to the ongoing Showing Animals Respect & Kindness campaign against pigeon shoots.
The Corr case named as defendants both DiDonato and Campus Eye Group, DiDonato’s former business.
According to the Corr lawsuit, “DiDonato lost millions of dollars, he was desperate to stop the losses, and as such the case consumed him and he obsessed over it.”
Corr became legal representative for the Philadelphia Gun Club in response to the Showing Animals Respect & Kindness campaign against pigeon shoots “in late 2009,” his case recounted, “at which time the undersigned was working at a different law firm,” as a partner in Corr Mitchell.
The partnership, with Doylestown lawyer Robert A. Mitchell, ended acrimoniously in 2014, amid a running dispute over “the correct amount owed by the Philadelphia Gun Club” to both attorneys.
DiDonato hired Corr with check from Campus Eye Group
Corr detailed in his case against the Philadelphia Gun Club that his “Representation of defendants DiDonato, in his individual capacity, and of his business, Campus Eye Group, LLC, began for the first time on June 6, 2013,” about a year and a half before the Corr/Mitchell split, “when DiDonato returned his personal engagement letter, along with a check for $10,000, written on the Campus Eye Group’s operating account.”
DiDonato, however, did not become president of the Philadelphia Gun Club until 2018.
Meanwhile, on April 12, 2018, Corr stipulated, “DiDonato together with [John A.] Ross,” a fellow Philadelphia Gun Club member, “reneged on DiDonato’s earlier promise that the undersigned would be paid, and instead informed [Corr] that no defendant would be making payment for services rendered unless it were for a minimal amount, as measured by Philadelphia Gun Club finances, not any individual client’s personal finances, despite the fact that all clients filed” the lawsuit against Showing Respect & Kindness for which Corr claimed he had not been paid, “in their own name.”
“DiDonato by far was losing the most and had the most to lose”
Bruce DiDonato, “and his business Campus Eye Group, LLC,” Corr contended, “were the only clients of [Corr] who could claim and show actual economic loss in the form of lost profits and lost economic opportunities.
“Bruce DiDonato alone was losing money as a result of the conduct [protests against pigeon shoots] which was the subject of the underlying litigation,” Corr asserted, “while the other defendants were suffering reputational harm without attendant economic harm; as a result of which DiDonato by far was losing the most and had the most to lose.”
Bruce DiDonato’s financial losses were of significant benefit to the Philadelphia Gun Club and its other member plaintiffs,” Corr argued, “because it was only through DiDonato that the defendant in the underlying case faced a threat of a large financial loss.”
(SHARK photo)
Boycotts
In other words, Bruce DiDonato’s claim of having lost money due to the Showing Animals Respect & Kindness campaign against Philadelphia Gun Club pigeon shoots is what gave the club, DiDonato, and the other plaintiffs standing to pursue the case––which ultimately failed anyway, early in the legal process.
The Philadelphia Gun Club and member plaintiffs, including also Jordan Irving, Clark Travers, William Comly, Karl Natriello, Carl Badenhausen, and John Ross, sued Showing Animals Respect & Kindness after Showing Animals Respect & Kindness disclosed their individual identities and urged boycotts of their businesses.
Attempts by the plaintiffs to pursue the case had by June 2017 failed in both federal and New Jersey state courts.
Rider University
Showing Animals Respect & Kindness in 2022 learned, and disclosed, that Bruce DiDonato had “deep ties to Rider University,” a 3,700-student private institution in Lawrence Township, New Jersey, “including having a lecture hall named after him, and being listed as a director of the University.”
Showing Animals Respect & Kindness then “released a video calling out Rider for this relationship,” a SHARK newsletter detailed, “not just because of the heinous animal cruelty, but because over the past ten years, gun club members have attacked female activists who were protesting the club. This includes disgusting verbal harassment that was targeted at a woman and pigeon shooters driving their vehicles at female activists.
“Bruce DiDonato himself used his SUV to harass a woman who filmed him. Shockingly, Rider president Gregory Dell’Omo has refused to even respond to this important issue. Money, it seems, matters more to Rider than morality,” though Rider was founded in 1865 in Temperance Hall in Trenton, New Jersey, in the name of promoting morality in business.
University scrambled
“Our video was covered by Rider University’s own newspaper, and that was enough to make the administration scramble to remove a page on their website that still had DiDonato listed as a member of the board of trustees,” Showing Animals Respect & Kindness said.
“However, Rider still has a lecture hall named for DiDonato,” Showing Animals Respect & Kindness noted.
The April 26, 2021 Rider News article by Shaun Chornobroff, now on the sports beat for the LaCrosse Tribune in Wisconsin, mentioned that “Bruce DiDonato was a prominent member of the Rider community and a member of the board of trustees from July 2010 to June 2019,” that Bruce DiDonato, “as president of the Philadelphia Gun Club, held live pigeon shooting exhibitions for entertainment, leaving the wounded birds to die before they were shoved into garbage bags for disposal”; and that “In 2017 Bruce DiDonato had a lecture hall named after him after he funded an upgrade to Rider’s Science & Technology Center.”
(See Rider University Covers Animal Abusing Doctor.)
(LinkedIn photo)
“Financial difficulties & loss of students”
Rider University may never have recovered from the bad publicity resulting from association with Bruce DiDonato, whether resulting from Showing Animals Respect & Kindness video exposés or from his conviction for tax evasion.
According to Wikipedia, “Rider University’s bonds have been rated as below-investment-grade since 2020. As of 2023, the school has experienced financial difficulties and a loss of a fifth of its student body due to declining enrollment.
(Beth Clifton collage)
‘In November of 2025, Rider announced a restructuring plan that included faculty layoffs, salary reductions and other cost-cutting measures. Its audited financial statements for fiscal 2025 reported a $12.6 million loss from operating activities, compared with a $21.4 million operating loss in fiscal 2024.”
The Middle States Commission on Higher Education in October 2025 put Rider University on probation, a possible step toward losing academic accreditation.
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