Trump Institute: His Other Ponzi Scheme

You keep seeing the media refer to Emailgate as 'not going away.'

http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/286059-email-story-wont-end-for-clinton

That's mostly because they: won't stop talking about it, rather than anything new or important is actually there.

The media, of course has given this nonstory legs just as they did to Whitewater, Vince Foster, and more recently, Benghazi.

Benghazi turned out to be a nothingburger-as far as Hillary is concerned she had no personal wrongdoing. But the media hyped it up to the effect that she did and even now you have Hillary hating pundits claim that the story hurt her  popularity somehow though she did nothing wrong.

You know what story really isn't going away? Trump U. There are all kinds of documents which should be public-in the public interest. It's also quite unfair to the plaintiffs-Trump gets it exactly backwards-that the judge has postponed the trial till after the election-as if they have any hope prevailing if Trump were, God help us all, President Elect.

But Trump U is just one very troubling escapade in Trump's Ponzi scheme of a business career.

There is, for instance, Trump Institute:

"In 2005, as he was making a transition from developing real estate to capitalizing on his fame through ventures like a reality show and product-licensing deals, Donald J. Trump hit upon a two-pronged strategy for entering the field of for-profit education."

"He poured his own money into Trump University, which began as a distance-learning business advising customers on how to make money in real estate, but left a long trail of customers alleging they were defrauded. Their lawsuits have cast a shadow over Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign."

"But Mr. Trump also lent his name, and his credibility, to a seminar business he did not own, which was branded the Trump Institute. Its operators rented out hotel ballrooms across the country and invited people to pay up to $2,000 to come hear Mr. Trump’s “wealth-creating secrets and strategies.”

And its customers had ample reason to ask whether they, too, had been deceived.

"As with Trump University, the Trump Institute promised falsely that its teachers would be handpicked by Mr. Trump. Mr. Trump did little, interviews show, besides appear in an infomercial — one that promised customers access to his vast accumulated knowledge. “I put all of my concepts that have worked so well for me, new and old, into our seminar,” he said in the 2005 video, adding, “I’m teaching what I’ve learned.”

"Reality fell far short. In fact, the institute was run by a couple who had run afoul of regulators in dozens of states and had been dogged by accusations of deceptive business practices and fraud for decades. Similar complaints soon emerged about the Trump Institute."

"Yet there was an even more fundamental deceit to the business, unreported until now: Extensive portions of the materials that students received after paying their seminar fees, supposedly containing Mr. Trump’s special wisdom, had been plagiarized from an obscure real estate manual published a decade earlier."

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/30/us/politics/donald-trump-institute-plagiarism.html

Can you imagine for a second if the media covered Trump like they do Hillary? No doubt they'd run her out of politics. Yet, Trump is just a normal candidate who happened to have not paid his taxes in multiple years, been audited every year since the 80s, been in 3500 lawsuits, and has bilked many regular Americans pointing them out of business and in major harm's way.

Yet the media says that private emails are the story which won't go away.

"Together, the exaggerated claims about his own role, the checkered pasts of the people with whom he went into business and the theft of intellectual property at the venture’s heart all illustrate the fiction underpinning so many of Mr. Trump’s licensing businesses: Putting his name on products and services — and collecting fees — was often where his actual involvement began and ended."

 “That Trump Institute, what criminals they are,” said Carol Minto of West Haven, Conn., a retired court reporter who attended one seminar in 2009 and agreed to spend $1,997.94 to attend another before having second thoughts. She wound up requiring the help of two states’ attorneys general in getting a refund. “They wanted to steal my money,” she said.

"The institute was another example of the Trump brand’s being accused of luring vulnerable customers with false promises of profit and success. Others, besides Trump University, include multilevel marketing ventures that sold vitamins and telecommunications services, and a vanity publisher that faced hundreds of consumer complaints."

"Mr. Trump’s infomercial performance suggested he was closely overseeing the Trump Institute. “People are loving it,” he said in the program, titled “The Donald Trump Way to Wealth” and staged like a talk show in front of a wildly enthusiastic audience. “People are really doing well with it, and they’re loving it.” His name, picture and aphorisms like “I am the American Dream, supersized version” were all over the course materials.

"Yet while he owned 93 percent of Trump University, the Trump Institute was owned and operated by Irene and Mike Milin, a couple who had been marketing get-rich-quick courses since the 1980s."

"A Trump executive, Michael Sexton, told The Sacramento Bee in 2006 that there was a simple reason for going into business with the Milins: Their company was “the best in the business.”

"Yet the Milins’ reputation was actually pockmarked with lawsuits and regulatory actions — a dismal track record that Mr. Trump and his aides could have unearthed with a modicum of due diligence."

In other news, Trump has given very little charitable giving despite his inflated claims.

"Trump promised millions to charity. We found less than $10,000 over 7 years."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-promised-millions-to-charity-we-found-less-than-10000-over-7-years/2016/06/28/cbab5d1a-37dd-11e6-8f7c-d4c723a2becb_story.html

Turns out Hillary has given a lot more-as we know as she has released her tax returns. 

The biggest Ponzi Scheme of all is his entire campaign. Much like Boris Johnson in Britain turned out to be.