When you think about how much the Trump brand has gone up in value since he won, it's probably gone up several billion dollars. So, what's a lousy $25 million? He would have paid twice that without blinking an eye. These people were nuts settling for so little. It would be different if he lost. But he won.
Trump settles Trump University lawsuits for $25 million
President-elect Donald Trump has agreed to pay $25 million to former students of his for-profit Trump University as part of a settlement that resolves three outstanding lawsuits against him, including one in which he was set to testify in a trial that was due to begin in San Diego later this month.
As part of the agreement, Trump will pay $1 million in penalties to the state of New York for violating state education laws by labeling his nonaccredited school a “university” without registering as an educational institution with New York state officials, according to New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman, who announced the settlement Friday afternoon.
“In 2013, my office sued Donald Trump for swindling thousands of innocent Americans out of millions of dollars through a scheme known as Trump University,” Schneiderman said in a statement. “Donald Trump fought us every step of the way, filing baseless charges and fruitless appeals and refusing to settle for even modest amounts of compensation for the victims of his phony university. Today, that all changes. Today’s $25 million settlement agreement is a stunning reversal by Donald Trump and a major victory for the over 6,000 victims of his fraudulent university.”
Trump, for his part, was as defiant as ever. “I just had a great victory against lightweight A.G. Eric Schneiderman,” he wrote in a tweet this afternoon. “Most of his case re Trump U. was thrown out or gutted. Little remains.”
The announcement came after days of frantic negotiations among the parties that began last week, after Trump was elected president and U.S. Judge Gonzalo Curiel — the U.S.-born judge whom Trump repeatedly attacked during the campaign as biased due to his “Mexican” heritage — began prodding the parties to resolve the cases. The first of three lawsuits was scheduled to start in Curiel’s courtroom Nov. 28. Trump’s lawyers had filed motions urging that the trial date be postponed, arguing that their client was too busy assembling his new administration to testify in a civil trial.
The negotiations were a three-sided affair, involving Trump’s lawyers in Los Angeles, plaintiff’s lawyers in San Diego and Schneiderman’s office in New York, according to a source familiar with the talks. During the negotiations, Trump — who vowed during the campaign to never settle the cases — balked at the wording of the proposed agreement and refused to accept that he was paying “penalties” for violating state laws, according to the source. Friday’s announcement by Schneiderman used the word “penalties” for Trump’s alleged violation of state education laws. The final terms of the agreement, however, are due to be presented to Curiel later Friday afternoon and have not yet been publicly released. Curiel must still approve the settlement for it to take effect.
The Trump University case concerns the running of a for-profit business school launched by Trump in 2005 with a promotional YouTube video and ads that proclaimed, “I can turn anyone into a successful real estate investor, including you,” “Are you my next apprentice?” and “Learn from my handpicked experts how you can profit from the largest real estate liquidation in history.”
In fact, Trump University was never an accredited educational institution, and he was later forced by state attorneys general to change its name to the “Trump Entrepreneurial Initiative.” The former students suing him allege that Trump used “misleading, fraudulent and predatory practices,” conning them into maxing out their credit cards and in some cases paying more than $35,000 in fees for seminars and “mentoring” by Trump’s “handpicked” real estate experts. The lawsuit against the school, which is no longer in business, alleged that the seminars were little more than an “infomercial” and that the Trump mentors offered “no practical advice” and “mostly disappeared.”
Trump has consistently denied the allegations and insisted that questionnaires filled out by students after the seminars showed that “98 percent” of them were positive about their experiences.
Under the terms of the settlement, all 6,000 students who enrolled in Trump University would be eligible to receive some compensation, although the amounts will vary widely depending on how much they paid for courses, the source familiar with the deal said.
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