Published on Feb 28, 2016
The attacks on Trump University from his rivals seem to be rattling Donald Trump, as he spent quite a bit of time at a rally today insisting his university was not a scam and downplaying the lawsuit against him.
For a quick summation: Trump U started in 2005 and ran for a few years with the promise of helping people learn about real estate and business from The Donald himself. Some people who signed up complained it was a scam and have filed a lawsuit against Trump for ripping them off.
For a quick summation: Trump U started in 2005 and ran for a few years with the promise of helping people learn about real estate and business from The Donald himself. Some people who signed up complained it was a scam and have filed a lawsuit against Trump for ripping them off.
Robert Parry | NFL's War Against Science and Reason
Robert Parry, Consortium News
Parry writes: "Surely, the NFL's four-game suspension of the New England Patriots quarterback on the charge of tampering with the air pressure of footballs is not as serious as the NFL covering up the dangers from concussions (reminiscent of how the cigarette industry long denied links between smoking and cancer), but the Brady case is a microcosm of how power works and how checks and balances, including the major news media, fail."
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Robert Parry, Consortium News
Parry writes: "Surely, the NFL's four-game suspension of the New England Patriots quarterback on the charge of tampering with the air pressure of footballs is not as serious as the NFL covering up the dangers from concussions (reminiscent of how the cigarette industry long denied links between smoking and cancer), but the Brady case is a microcosm of how power works and how checks and balances, including the major news media, fail."
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Judge Bashed by Trump Orders Release of Company Records
Tom Hamburger, The Washington Post
Hamburger writes: "A federal judge has ordered the release of internal Trump University documents in an ongoing lawsuit against the company, including 'playbooks' that advised sales personnel how to market high-priced courses on getting rich through real estate."
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Tom Hamburger, The Washington Post
Hamburger writes: "A federal judge has ordered the release of internal Trump University documents in an ongoing lawsuit against the company, including 'playbooks' that advised sales personnel how to market high-priced courses on getting rich through real estate."
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Donald Trump announced the establishment of Trump University in May 2005 in New
York City. The plaintiffs in the lawsuit, filed in 2010, accuse him and the now-defunct
school of defrauding people who paid as much as $35,000 for real estate advice.
(photo: Mario Tama/Getty Images)
federal judge has ordered the release of internal Trump University documents in an ongoing lawsuit against the company, including “playbooks” that advised sales personnel how to market high-priced courses on getting rich through real estate.
The Friday ruling, in which Judge Gonzalo Curiel cited heightened public interest in presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, was issued in response to a request by The Washington Post. The ruling was a setback for Trump, whose attorneys argued that the documents contained trade secrets.
Curiel’s order came the same day that Trump railed against the judge at a boisterous San Diego rallyfor his handling of the case, in which students have alleged they were misled and defrauded. The trial is set for November.
Trump, who previously questioned whether Curiel’s Hispanic heritage made him biased due to Trump’s support for building a wall on the Mexican border, said Friday that Curiel “happens to be, we believe, Mexican.” Trump called the judge a “hater of Donald Trump” who had “railroaded” him in the case.
“I think Judge Curiel should be ashamed of himself. I think it’s a disgrace that he is doing this, “ Trump said.
In his order, Curiel noted that Trump had emerged as a leading presidential candidate over the course of the civil case against Trump University and that Trump had “placed the integrity of these court proceedings at issue.” The judge pointed to a previous case to say that courts deciding on public disclosure must weigh “whether a party benefitting from the order of confidentiality is a public entity or official; and ... whether the case involves issues important to the public.”
Trump University was started in 2004 to offer courses in entrepreneurship under the Trump brand. Trump gave his blessing, according to court documents reported previously by The Post, becoming a 93 percent owner of the new enterprise.
Two class action lawsuits being considered in San Diego have accused Trump University of using deceptive practices as it brought in millions of dollars from customers who were told they would learn Trump’s techniques to become successful in the world of real estate. Trump and his attorneys have vigorously denied the fraud claims, pointing to high ratings that students gave their courses at the time.
The Post intervened in April, arguing that Trump’s pursuit of the presidency made his business dealings a matter of public interest and that an inactive company had no compelling reason to maintain secrecy.
Some of the firm’s internal documents previously became public. A 2010 “playbook” published by Politico, for instance, directed sales people to rank students based on their liquid assets to determine who to target for buying courses.
Trump and his attorneys have said the company would return in some form after the case is resolved and that it would be damaged by the release of the marketing material.
Curiel seemed unconvinced. Trump’s “assertion that the information retains any commercial value is speculative given the lack of any support for the statement that Trump University ‘may’ resume operations,” the order released Friday said.
Curiel ordered that the playbooks and other records, numbering about 1,000 pages, be released by Thursday, June 2, allowing time to redact telephone numbers and other personal information about the company.
In addition to the class action cases, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman filed a $40 million lawsuit in 2013 alleging that Trump had defrauded more than 5,000 individuals through Trump University, which was never licensed as an educational institution.
Schneiderman alleged in the suit that Trump personally earned $5 million from the enterprise, in which sales personnel were assigned to get people to pay $1,495 for a three-day seminar in real estate techniques. In selling the courses, Trump released a marketing video that said, “We are going to have professors and adjunct professors that are absolutely terrific ... and these are all people who are going to be handpicked by me.”
One of the university’s top executives, Michael Sexton, subsequently testified in one of the class action suits that “none of the professors at the live events” were handpicked by Trump. Depositions released in March quote Trump acknowledging a lack of close involvement with mentors and students.
The fraud allegations were highlighted during this year’s campaign for the GOP presidential nomination by some of Trump’s competitors and by a super PAC that opposed Trump.
Campaign and legal representatives for Trump could not be reached for comment Saturday. However, Jill A. Martin, vice president and assistant general counsel for the Trump Organization, said in a written statement in March that the allegations had “no substance.” She added that “Trump University was a professionally run company which provided students with a valuable and substantive education and the tools to succeed in business and real estate.”
http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/37148-judge-bashed-by-trump-orders-release-of-company-records
How Four Words Rewrote Bayer-Monsanto Deal Script
Tom Polansek and Greg Roumeliotis, Reuters
Excerpt: "'There is nothing there.' Monsanto Co President Brett Begemann uttered those words last week to a small group of investors and a Reuters reporter when asked how the world's largest seed company he helps lead might fit with German drugs and crop chemicals group Bayer AG."
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Tom Polansek and Greg Roumeliotis, Reuters
Excerpt: "'There is nothing there.' Monsanto Co President Brett Begemann uttered those words last week to a small group of investors and a Reuters reporter when asked how the world's largest seed company he helps lead might fit with German drugs and crop chemicals group Bayer AG."
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Gay Couple Attacked? In West Virginia, It's Not a Hate Crime
Jonathan Mattise, Associated Press
Mattise writes: "A Marshall University football player saw two men kissing on a West Virginia street, hopped out of the passenger seat of a car, shouted homophobic slurs and attacked the men, punching them in the face. Those charges against Steward Butler may sound like a textbook hate crime case. But, a year later, the former running back no longer faces charges of violating the men's civil rights."
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Jonathan Mattise, Associated Press
Mattise writes: "A Marshall University football player saw two men kissing on a West Virginia street, hopped out of the passenger seat of a car, shouted homophobic slurs and attacked the men, punching them in the face. Those charges against Steward Butler may sound like a textbook hate crime case. But, a year later, the former running back no longer faces charges of violating the men's civil rights."
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Israeli Firm Claims It Can Tell if You're a Terrorist by Looking at Your Face
Michaela Whitton, theAntiMedia.org
Whitton writes: "A software company now says it can, and it claims it is able to identify terrorists purely by their facial features. Turning the old idiom that 'you can't judge a book by its cover' on its head, the two-year-old company claims its artificial intelligence algorithms can look at a face and tell if it's likely to be a terrorist, pedophile, and, wait for it ... professional poker player."
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Michaela Whitton, theAntiMedia.org
Whitton writes: "A software company now says it can, and it claims it is able to identify terrorists purely by their facial features. Turning the old idiom that 'you can't judge a book by its cover' on its head, the two-year-old company claims its artificial intelligence algorithms can look at a face and tell if it's likely to be a terrorist, pedophile, and, wait for it ... professional poker player."
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More Than 700 Migrants Feared Dead in Three Separate Mediterranean Shipwrecks
Merrit Kennedy, NPR
Kennedy writes: "The U.N. Refugee Agency and Italian authorities say they fear at least 700 migrants have died in three separate shipwrecks in the Mediterranean since last Wednesday."
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Merrit Kennedy, NPR
Kennedy writes: "The U.N. Refugee Agency and Italian authorities say they fear at least 700 migrants have died in three separate shipwrecks in the Mediterranean since last Wednesday."
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Taiwan Recalls Quaker Oats Products Imported From US After Detecting Glyphosate
Lorraine Chow, EcoWatch
Chow writes: "More bad news for Quaker Oats. A random inspection from Taiwan's Food and Drug Administration (FDA) detected glyphosate in 10 out of 36 oatmeal products it tested, exceeding the country's legal limit."
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Lorraine Chow, EcoWatch
Chow writes: "More bad news for Quaker Oats. A random inspection from Taiwan's Food and Drug Administration (FDA) detected glyphosate in 10 out of 36 oatmeal products it tested, exceeding the country's legal limit."
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