Tag Archives: trump-university

New York’s Attorney General Has Opened An Inquiry into Donald Trump’s Charity

by Alina37H91973 Posted on September 14, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has opened an inquiry into Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s charity following questions over whether the foundation has complied with state law.

The scrutiny comes in light of recent investigations by the Washington Post and Associated Press that shed light into the inner workings of the Donald J. Trump Foundation. The Washington Post reported on Saturday that Trump, who founded the charity in 1987 and has claimed to have donated millions from his own pocket, had not contributed to his foundation since 2008. Instead, the Post found, Trump’s foundation received millions of dollars from donors, which it doled out under its own name.

In 2009, Trump reportedly spent $20,000 meant for charitable purposes on a six-foot-tall painting of himself. In 2013, the Trump Foundation gave $25,000 to a political group associated with Florida Attorney General Pamela Bondi. That gift, which was illegal, resulted in a $2,500 penalty payment to the Internal Revenue Service. House Democrats have called for a federal criminal investigation into the transaction.

Schneiderman told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Tuesday that his office was looking into Trump’s charity out of concern it had “engaged in some impropriety” in its operations. “We’ve inquired into it, and we’ve had correspondence with them,” he said. “I didn’t make a big deal out of it or hold a press conference. We have been looking into the Trump Foundation to make sure it’s complying with the laws governing charities in New York.”

Schneiderman is also challenging Trump in a lawsuit alleging that Trump University, the mogul’s defunct real-estate seminar, engaged in “persistent fraudulent, illegal and deceptive conduct.”

Original article:

New York’s Attorney General Has Opened An Inquiry into Donald Trump’s Charity

Posted in FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on New York’s Attorney General Has Opened An Inquiry into Donald Trump’s Charity

Trump University Taught Students How to Exploit Disabled Homeowners

by MargeryWoodfull Posted on July 12, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Trump University, the former for-profit business education venture that has landed Donald Trump in various courts to defend himself against claims of fraud, promised to teach students the secrets of Trump’s financial success. One particular course offered by Trump U presented a particularly blunt strategy for making money: target destitute, “completely disabled” homeowners headed into foreclosure and convince them to sell their homes at a discounted price. That is, exploit disabled people for profit.

That advice comes near the end of a nearly three-hour audio lesson—paired with a workbook—that was offered by Trump University in 2006, shortly before the housing market collapsed. It was a year after the opening of Trump University, which shut down in 2010 and has prompted lawsuits against Trump from former students who allege that the school was a scam that ripped them off.

The 2006 course, titled “Real Estate Goldmine: How to Get Rich Investing in Pre-Foreclosures,” begins with a monologue by Trump, who says, “We’re not peddling get-rich-quick schemes, no blue-sky promises or an easy road to riches.” But he pledges that his course will offer a “real estate gold mine.” Then Trump University’s Jon Ward interviews real estate investment adviser Gary Eldred about the best strategies for taking advantage of homeowners facing foreclosures. Throughout the course, Eldred provides a variety of tips on spotting homes that are in pre-foreclosure—for instance, look for an owner delinquent on payments because he could be foreclosed on imminently—and he offers strategies for persuading owners to sell their homes at a discount when they’re facing foreclosure. He repeatedly notes that a buyer should be kind when approaching pre-foreclosure owners about purchasing their properties, because these potential sellers are going through a stressful time.

But Eldred does cover how to take advantage of short sales—a deal in which a buyer talks the homeowner into selling and convinces the mortgage lender to reduce the seller’s debt. Eldred points out that a key aspect of such a transaction is convincing a lender that the owner won’t be able to pay back the loan as it stands. The goal, Eldred says, is to find homeowners who are in a truly desperate financial position.

“Under no circumstance will a lender accept a short sale if they think they can squeeze that borrower for an extra nickel, so certified destitution evidence needs to be included,” he explains. He lists the conditions that are ideal for a short sale: “The borrower is out of work, the borrower has $50,000 in unpaid medical claims, the borrow is completely disabled, the borrower has an extraordinarily messy divorce where everything has been squandered.”

During the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump has been criticized for mocking a New York Times reporter with a disability. Clips of that incident have become fodder for an attack ad created and aired by an outside group supporting Hillary Clinton.

During the course, Eldred laments several times that foreclosures are a painful but inevitable part of the economy. Trump makes a similar point in his introduction. “The sad fact is, more and more property owners are getting themselves in trouble!” Trump says. “Defaulting on mortgages and losing their homes or commercial properties. I’m sorry for them, but life goes on, and the fact is, one person’s misfortune is someone else’s opportunity. That’s just the way the world works. This program shows you how to make a lot of money from investing in pre-foreclosures.”

Read More – 

Trump University Taught Students How to Exploit Disabled Homeowners

Posted in FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Trump University Taught Students How to Exploit Disabled Homeowners

Trump U: The Big Con Behind the School Accused of Fraud

by WilmaReddick Posted on June 2, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

In the promotional video for his controversial and now-defunct Trump University, Donald Trump stared straight into the camera and proclaimed, “At Trump University, we teach success. That’s what it’s all about. Success.” He promised: “It’s going to happen to you.” And he went on: “The biggest step toward success is going to be sign up at Trump University.” With Trump U and Trump now accused of fraud in several lawsuits, records are emerging that suggest this Trump endeavor was not on the up-and-up and routinely employed hard-sell and shifty tactics to separate customers from their cash. But perhaps the big con behind this operation was that Trump, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, may not have believed that he could teach whoever signed up how to be successful, because through the years, Trump has repeatedly declared that he believes not everyone has the genetic composition and intelligence to become wealthy and successful.

Trump, who has campaigned as a champion of the little guy, has often stated his belief that only certain humans have the potential to be achievers. In a video for a 2006 book he co-wrote, Why We Want You to Be Rich, Trump was asked, “Do you think anybody can be rich?” His answer was no, and, in explaining this, he dumped on the most famous line of the Declaration of Independence:

No, I don’t think anybody can get rich. I think unfortunately the world is not a fair place. I think you have to be born with a certain intelligence. And it doesn’t have to be a super intelligence, it has to be a certain intelligence. You can’t take somebody that’s not a smart person and say, “By the way, this is what you do, and here’s your little card, and you’re gonna follow these rules and regulations and you’re gonna become a rich person.” The world is not fair. You know they come with this statement “all men are created equal.” Well, it sounds beautiful, and it was written by some very wonderful people and brilliant people, but it’s not true because all people and all men laughter aren’t created—now today they’d say all men and women, of course, they would have changed that statement that was made many years ago. But the fact is you have to be born and blessed with something up here pointing to his head. On the assumption you are, you can become very rich.

Trump’s all-folks-are-not-created-equal view was nothing new. In a 1990 Playboy interview, he noted that when it came to success, “I’m a strong believer in genes.” Years later, in a CNN interview, Trump noted, “I think I was born with a drive for success. I had a father who was successful. He was a builder in Brooklyn and Queens. And he was successful and, you know, I have a certain gene. I’m a gene believer. Hey, when you connect two racehorses, you usually end up with a fast horse. And I really was, you know, I had a good gene pool from the standpoint of that.” And at a Trump rally earlier this year in Biloxi, Mississippi, the mogul proclaimed, “I have Ivy League education, smart guy, good genes. I have great genes and all that stuff which I’m a believer in.”

It seems that Trump does view the world as divided between those who have the genetic potential to succeed and those who don’t. In a 2010 interview, he remarked, “I really believe that a leader is born more so than made.” During a speech the following year in Australia, he asserted that dealing with pressure is a key to succeeding in business and that “some people cannot genetically handle pressure.” In another speech that year on how to succeed, Trump observed, “A lot of you people have a certain factor that make you successful. A lot of people don’t…I will talk about people that shouldn’t even be in the room. Because there are people that can’t do certain things. They can’t be entrepreneurial…Not everybody’s cut out to be an entrepreneur.”

So Trump believed that not everyone could be taught how to win in business and investing because not everyone had the right stuff. And at times he has been explicit about this. When Trump was promoting his best-selling book, The Art of the Deal, he was asked by an interviewer whether people would learn how to make a lot of money from his book. He replied, “Well they might learn that, and they also might learn that they shouldn’t try making too much money because I really have a theory that some people are not destined to make a lot of money, and that’s fine. And they can be very happy, in fact…Not everybody is meant to be a businessperson.”

That was not the message of Trump University. Its ads promised that its students—who paid up to $35,000 for courses—would learn Trump’s “secrets” for amassing wealth and be taught how to apply them right away. “Above all,” Trump said in the promotional video for this business, “it’s about how to become successful.” The pitch essentially said this: Anyone can do it. Yet Trump has frequently indicated that he doesn’t really buy that. Instead, you need good genes, Trump-type genes, to succeed and score big in this not-everyone-is-created-equal world. In that case, there’s not much point in trying to teach inferior Trump wannabes to be like the superior Trump, unless your aim is to redistribute wealth—from them to you. But, in keeping with Trump’s elitist belief in the power of genes, this setup might be called financial Darwinism. (To the guys with the good genes go the spoils—and the cash!) And soon the courts will determine if it’s also fraud.

See original – 

Trump U: The Big Con Behind the School Accused of Fraud

Posted in Everyone, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Trump U: The Big Con Behind the School Accused of Fraud