On June 2, 2026, Connecticut’s top consumer-protection and legal officials turned their attention to a small charitable fund in New Britain with an outsized question hanging over it: where did the money go, and who controlled it?
Attorney General William Tong and Department of Consumer Protection Commissioner Bryan Cafferelli announced a joint investigation into former New Britain Mayor Erin Stewart’s handling of charitable assets tied to the Mayor’s Trophy Charitable Fund, a donor-advised fund managed by the Community Foundation of Greater New Britain. The probe was opened under the Solicitation of Charitable Funds Act, Conn. Gen. Stat. § 21a-175 et seq., the state law that governs how charitable dollars are raised and accounted for.
The crux: two accounts sharing a name
What makes this case unusual is a naming collision. Investigators say they have identified two separate accounts carrying the Mayor’s Trophy Charitable Fund name. One is the donor-advised fund actually administered by the Community Foundation. The other is a checking account at M&T Bank — Account No. 2073320 — that the Foundation does not manage and over which it appears to have no control.
That second account is the real center of gravity. All three information requests issued that day circle back to it. A donor-advised fund housed at a community foundation comes with built-in oversight: the foundation administers distributions, keeps records, and assumes the charity’s reporting obligations. A separately held checking account bearing the same name carries none of those guardrails, which is precisely why state lawyers want to understand how it came to exist, who opened it, who could write checks on it, and where its money went.
Three requests, three targets
The state moved on three fronts at once.
A subpoena to Erin Stewart Mutone commands her to appear for a sworn deposition at the Office of the Attorney General in Hartford on June 30, 2026, and to produce documents. The testimony is to cover the ownership and control of the accounts, how they were established and with which financial institutions, the setup and administration of the donor-advised fund, how donations were solicited, and the broader purpose and operation of the accounts. The accompanying document demand reaches back to January 1, 2020, and seeks origination paperwork and signature cards, bank statements with full copies of checks and deposit slips, any ledgers or bookkeeping, fundraising communications including texts and emails, and related social media posts.
A subpoena to M&T Bank, served the same day, directs the bank’s records keeper to hand over origination documents, signature cards, and monthly statements for Account No. 2073320 — again covering the period from January 1, 2020, forward. The bank’s deadline is tighter: production is due by 4:00 p.m. on June 15, 2026.
A letter of inquiry to the Community Foundation of Greater New Britain — addressed to President and CEO Kaylah Milligan — is the softer of the three instruments, a request for cooperation rather than a command. It asks the Foundation to describe the fund’s origination, nature, and charitable purpose; explain how distributions are made; account for the origination and purpose of the M&T checking account; and identify and document any donations that flowed from that checking account into the Foundation-managed fund. The Foundation’s response is requested by June 30, 2026.
Notably, the letter ties the inquiry to the “Crombie Law Report on Erin Stewart’s use of the City of New Britain’s credit card” — signaling that this charity probe is connected to the broader scrutiny of Stewart’s finances.
How this fits the larger story
The investigation lands at a precarious moment for Stewart. A Republican who served as New Britain’s mayor from 2013 to 2025 and is the daughter of former mayor Tim Stewart, she suspended a campaign for governor in May 2026 amid allegations that she had misused a city-issued credit card for personal expenses. Reporting on those allegations described purchases of clothing and gifts logged as office supplies, some delivered to her home.
The charitable fund itself traces back to her father, who started it with charitable golf tournaments — a detail that underscores why the state wants a clean accounting of a fund that has existed, in one form or another, for years. Local community organizers have described the fund as a genuine source of support for events like New Britain’s Little Poland Festival, which adds a layer of complication: real charitable giving and serious questions about controls can coexist, and untangling them is exactly what an investigation like this is for.
Stewart has been represented by attorney Raymond Hassett in connection with the earlier matters. Investigators have been careful to frame the new probe as fact-finding rather than accusation. In their joint statement, Tong and Cafferelli said their job is to ensure charities follow the rules and to give donors confidence their money is used as intended, adding that the inquiry would “follow the facts wherever they lead, without regard to politics or personalities.”
What to watch next
A few dates anchor what comes next. M&T Bank’s records are due June 15. Both Stewart’s document production and the Foundation’s written response are due June 30, with Stewart’s deposition set for the same day. The bank statements and signature cards will likely be the most revealing items, since they establish who actually opened and controlled the M&T checking account and how funds moved through it.
It is worth keeping the legal posture in perspective. An investigation is not a charge, and a subpoena is a tool for gathering facts, not a finding of wrongdoing. Whether the two-account structure reflects a benign administrative arrangement, sloppy bookkeeping, or something more serious is precisely the question the state has set out to answer.
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