NBC was the only network to report the story, and in their rush to slam Trump they omitted some important details. A formal investigation was never opened. “When I want something, I get it”, he said at a campaign event in January.
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Bondi, a vocal Florida surrogate for Trump, told a Tampa rally in March that they have been “friends for years, and I know his family personally”. Instead, staff, doing due diligence, reviewed the complaints and the NY litigation and made the proper determination that the NY litigation would provide relief to aggrieved consumers nationwide. He claims Trump University had thousands of satisfied customers, and he has vowed to fight the lawsuits to the last.
He added that unlike Trump’s own charitable foundation, the Clinton Foundation “actually (says) who gives us money and what we spend it on”.
Abbott, whose office considered a lawsuit against Trump University before the company left Texas in 2010, is now supporting Trump – who donated $35,000 to Abbott’s successful 2014 gubernatorial campaign. At the time, the general narrative in the media has been that Bondi was considering whether to investigate fraud allegations against Trump University. “In the end, it was decided not to investigate”.
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KATY TUR: I’m Katy Tur. And you need a presidential look, you have to get the job done.
These concerns also bring up some of Trump’s earlier remarks about political donations.. Trump Foundation, with orders from the boss, illegally donated $25,000 to the political campaign of Republican Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, reported the Washington Post and reported here on Blasting News. “Hillary Clinton will not bully me”.
Trump denies that he and Bondi ever spoke about Trump University. Around the same time, Ms. Bondi’s office said it was weighing an investigation into allegations of fraud against scandal-ridden Trump University.
So the picture coming into focus is not of someone who knows the system better than anyone. When they call, I give. The Trump camp says both the gift and the wrong listing were mistakes.
DREW GRIFFIN: Here are the facts. Bondi ought to invite an outside, independent review of her office’s decision making.
Trump, of course, has vigorously defended the business that bore his name. NY rules capped total donations by an individual at $50,000.
Reichelderfer told AP that Bondi spoke with Trump “several weeks” before her office publicly announced it was deliberating whether to join a lawsuit proposed by New York’s Democratic attorney general. It was September of 2013.
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Hillary Clinton has tried every imaginable argument to confront voter concerns about the Clinton Foundation and her ties to its big donors. While that example of “pay to play” was rather benign at the time, the accusation of using $25,000 to get a Florida attorney general to drop an investigation into one’s allegedly fraudulent, for-profit university might be somewhat more consequential than getting famous people to pretend to care that one is getting married. According to the Associated Press, around that time, Bondi asked Trump for a donation to her campaign. Bondi, also a Republican, has endorsed Trump’s White House bid.
