That’s what Donald Trump has finally done. The incoming president has settled three lawsuits related to Trump University, the seminar company bearing his name that operated from 2005 to 2011. Trump will reportedly pay $21 million in two class-action lawsuits filed by people who paid to attend the seminars, and contend they were ripped off. He’ll pay another $4 million to end a suit filed by the New York attorney general. As is customary in such settlements, Trump will admit no wrongdoing.
This would be a good deal for Trump even at a much higher price, because protracted litigation over Trump University would have brought Trump months or years of ugly publicity, just as he’s trying to establish momentum for his first year in office. Had Trump never run for president, these lawsuits would have been a minor story, and Trump could have fought them with little notice. But with everything Trump touches now magnified by the lens of the worldwide media, the lawsuits were destined to be a circus that sullied the leader of the free world as he was trying to build relationships with fellow heads of state.
[Related: Trump University was a lousy business, even if it was legal.]
Trump has some legitimate business successes to be proud of, but his so-called university wasn’t one of them. In fact, it was one of the shabbiest schemes ever bear to the Trump name. Trump actually founded the company with the intention of doing something novel regarding online education on entrepreneurship. But the original plan never panned out, and within a year or two Trump pivoted to a much seamier business model.
Trump licensed his name to a Florida operation called Business Strategies Group, run by a couple called Mike and Irene Milin, who were in the infomercial business. The Milins had battled fraud charges many times, but that didn’t stop Trump from collaborating with them. The plan was to use Trump’s name to lure consumers to “free” seminars on real-estate investing, but nothing was really free. The first seminar would be a pitch to enroll in another one, this time for a fee. At the second seminar there would be another such pitch—all the way up to a series of courses costing as much as $35,000. Many of the attendees were hard-luck hopefuls drawn by Trump’s reality-show allure.
[Related: Trump University went wrong when its boss lunged for bigger profits.]
A group of people who paid to attend the courses ultimately sued for fraud, saying they were misled about what they would get for their money. Former employees of Trump University testified about being pressured to hard-sell attendees on costly courses, even if the enrollees couldn’t afford the fees. Salespeople would encourage attendees to put fees on their credit cards or even drain retirement accounts to pay for the courses. The New York attorney general sued claiming that Trump has misused the word “university,” normally reserved for accredited educational institutions, which Trump’s operation was not.
During the presidential campaign, Trump insisted he’d win once the cases got to court. But it’s better that we’ll never know. For Trump, a settlement brushes one embarrassing episode off the table at a time when he’s already heading for plenty of other controversies involving his cabinet appointments and the abrupt reversal of policies put in place under President Obama during the last eight years.
The plaintiffs will get some compensation (though much, undoubtedly, will go to lawyers). They’ll also be relieved of the need to testify against a sitting president and bear the sort of wrath Trump directs at detractors. As for the rest of us, we’ll be spared a bit of Trump overload. Nobody should complain about one less spectacle.
Rick Newman is the author of four books, including Rebounders: How Winners Pivot from Setback to Success. Follow him on Twitter: @rickjnewman.
