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| Satirical "Time Magazine" Cover |
When something or someone is associated with Donald Trump, criminal activity happens. Crimes and cons will be his legacy.
Trumpers will never believe this.
Trump supporters have been conned, hoodwinked, fooled and yes, brainwashed by one of the sleaziest con men of recent times.
Presidential candidate Donald Trump's words of January 25, 2016 were prophetic:
"I could stand In the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose any voters"
True. Unlike any President or candidate in my lifetime, NOTHING Trump does or says so much as raises an eyebrow with his followers/supporters.
Yet, Trump's presidency was essentially a criminal enterprise with eight of his close associates convicted, arrested or indicted:
1. Steve Brannon: charged with defrauding Trump supporters with a bogus money-raising campaign to build the border wall
2. Roger Stone: convicted of lying under oath to Congress
3. Paul Manafort: convicted of bank fraud, tax fraud, money laundering and witness tampering
4. Michael Cowen: convicted of orchestrating "hush money" for Trump's sexual partners, lying to Congress
5. Michael Flynn: plead guilty to lying to the F.B.I.
6. Rick Gates: plead guilty to conspiracy against the United States and lying to investigators
7. George Nader: convicted of child pornography and illegally bringing a young boy to the United States
8. George Papadopolous: plead guilty to lying to the F.B.I.
No President, including Richard Nixon, has ever had this many members of his administration convicted, charged or found guilty of criminal conduct.
By any measure, the Trump administration was the most criminal in history.
Then, there was the matter of so-called Trump University, a school Trump set up in 2005 claiming it would "give students the knowledge and skills" needed to successfully compete in the real estate industry.
Trump U. was not a university in any sense of the word, not accredited, offering no degrees, credits or even grades.
In legal documents it is referred to as Trump Wealth Institute and Trump Entrepreneur Initiative LLC.
Students could pick from several "Trump Elite Packages," costing from $9,995 to $34,995, but there was almost no actual classroom instruction, only 3 and 5 day seminars allowing students to interact and hobnob with "successful" real estate entrepreneurs.
Trump's only actual connection to the enterprise was making videos that contained promises of business success and taking a cut from every "Elite" package sold.
Soon students and the New York Attorney Generals Office realized enrollees were being defrauded, resulting in three law suits along with two class action suits against Trump University.
Donald Trump, who announced time and again that he would "never" settle, did indeed settle the law suits in November 2016, just after being elected President.
The award against Trump totalled $25,000,000 with $21,000,000 going to students enjoined in the suit, returning to them nearly 90% of their original tuition.
$3,000,000 was reserved for students who hadn't joined the suit and $1,000,000 went to the New York Attorney General's Office for fees and penalties.
Actually, Trump did not even pay the $25,000,000. The award was covered by Trump's Las Vegas hotel partner, billionaire Phil Ruffin.
Investigators discovered that Ruffin actually gave Trump $28,000,000.
Ruffin insists, however, that the money was not for the settlement but for hotel "backfees."
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| Governor Abbott |
While the State of New York was processing their suit against Trump University, the Chief of the Texas Consumer Affairs Division, John Owens, of the Texas Attorney General's office under then AG Greg Abbott was preparing a law suit of its own.
Owens sought to recover $2,600,000 for Texas students plus $2,800,000 in penalties, finding that 267 Texans had spent $425,000 on 3 day seminars, 39 Texans hard purchased the $34,995 "Elite Package," with another 167 students spending $826,000 on "goods and services."
Despite the evidence gathered by the Consumer Products Division in 2010, then Attorney General Greg Abbott refused to file suit, calling Owen's evidence-gathering a "political" move.
Owens called Greg Abbott's rationale for refusing to protect Texans from being defrauded "absurd."
Abbott subsequently ran for governor, benefitting from a $35,000 contribution from Donald Trump.
To be sure, Trump University was about what one could expect from a con artist with a criminal bent.
Speaking of crime, Politico, as well as Rolling Stone deals extensively with Trump's mob ties:
"But Trump was not clean as a whistle. Beginning three years earlier, he’d hired mobbed-up firms to erect Trump Tower and his Trump Plaza apartment building in Manhattan, including buying ostensibly overpriced concrete from a company controlled by mafia chieftains Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno and Paul Castellano.
That story eventually came out in a federal investigation, which also concluded that in a construction industry saturated with mob influence, the Trump Plaza apartment building most likely benefited from connections to racketeering.
Trump also failed to disclose that he was under investigation by a grand jury directed by the U.S. attorney in Brooklyn, who wanted to learn how Trump obtained an option to buy the Penn Central railroad yards on the West Side of Manhattan."
Soon, a new chapter will be written about Trump's criminal activities as, once again, the New York Attorney General's Office closes in on the notorious con man.
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