New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman filed suit against Donald Trump for $40 million on Saturday, claiming the online educational institute the billionaire runs is defrauding students. Most of the money would reimburse 5,000 students who took part in Trump’s institute. Trump, who contributed to Schneiderman’s political campaign, claims that this is an attempt by Schneiderman to extort more money, while Schneiderman stated that Trump and the university have violated federal consumer protection law, participated in persistent fraud, and engaged in illegal and deceptive conduct.
Trump’s attorney, Michael D. Cohen, told the press that the “attorney general has been angry because he felt that Mr. Trump and his various companies should have done much more for him in terms of fundraising…This entire investigation is politically motivated and it is a tremendous waste of taxpayers' money,” writes the AP. But Schneiderman says that students, who paid up to $35,000 for a three-day seminar, were lied to when they were led to believe they would meet Trump and learn everything they needed to know from instructors handpicked by Trump about real estate.
Not only did the students not meet Trump, according to the NYTimes, Trump neither wrote the curriculum nor chose the instructors, and students only posed with a picture of him. Many students were hooked with the promise of a 90 minute free seminar on real estate, which was really a prolonged pitch for the three-day seminar, which was really a prolonged pitch for the online program.
The online school was known as “Trump University” until State Education Department officials forced Trump to change it because it didn’t fulfill the legal definition of a university, in addition to lacking proper licensing. Now known as the Trump Entrepreneur Institute, it still appears as “Donald Trump University” at www.TrumpUniversity.com on internet search engines.
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