International News

WASHINGTON, (APP/AFP) – Donald Trump’s race
for the White House has sown panic among Republican leaders scrambling to prevent a man billed as a demagogue from clinching the party nomination — and one of their
weapons is Trump University.
At the center of a $40 million lawsuit in New York and potentially subject
to a separate trial in California in August, the now-defunct online education
company has been gleefully picked over in the volatile election campaign.
The American Future Fund, the conservative group which links to the
billionaire Koch brothers, has bankrolled ads from former students attesting to
Trump University trickery and urging US voters to ditch Trump.
Robert Guillo, a 76-year-old New Yorker who spent nearly $40,000 on tuition
alongside his son, knows exactly how they feel.
“I learned absolutely nothing, it’s an absolute scam,” he told AFP by
telephone. “He fooled me for $35,000, now he’s fooling the people of the United
States by saying things that are totally impossible to accomplish.”
The University operated from 2005 until 2010 when it was forced to re-name
itself the Trump Entrepreneur Institute because it had no license to call
itself a university.
Legal investigations culminated with New York state filing a lawsuit in
2013 alleging that the enterprise intentionally misled more than 5,000 people
across the country, including more than 600 in New York.
State attorney general Eric Schneiderman says 10,000 students enrolled in
real estate courses from 2005 to 2010 that ranged from free seminars to
specialized tuition costing $35,000 which earned the college $40 million.
They were lured by a free lecture that promoted a seminar costing $1,495,
which in turn marketed the “Trump Elite” package starting at $10,000 and rising
to $35,000 for a year’s mentorship program.