Donald 'Never Settle' Trump settles university fraud claims for $25M

Business

Donald ‘Never Settle’ Trump settles university fraud claims for $25M

President-elect Donald Trump has bought his way out of fraud allegations stemming from the now-defunct Trump University real estate education program. He reached a settlement of about $25 million in the three lawsuits relating to the university: two class actions in California and a case brought by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who said the $25 million to be paid by Trump or one of his business entities includes restitution for victims and $1 million in penalties to the state. Lawyers for the president-elect had been squaring off against students who claimed they were lured by false promises into paying up to $35,000 to learn Trump’s real estate investing “secrets” from his “hand-picked” instructors. The deal doesn’t require Trump, who insisted repeatedly during the campaign that he wouldn’t settle, to acknowledge wrongdoing.

Trump has conceded he did not “hand-pick” Trump University instructors, but claims the marketing language was not to be taken literally. He has said most students gave the classes high ratings. 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 the trial date be postponed, arguing that their client was too busy assembling his new administration to testify in a civil trial.