President-elect Donald Trump agreed to a $25 million settlement to end lawsuits against Trump University for fraud. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced Friday that victims had waited six years to see this result. Trump settle just days of a trial that was due to start on November 28.
The settlement will cover three lawsuits against Trump University. The educational center was accused of defrauding students by presenting itself as a university that taught the ways of Donald Trump and his success in business. But after investigations, it turned out that Donald Trump’s “college” was never a university.
“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,” Schneiderman said in a statement.
The three lawsuits were two class action suits in California and a case brought by New York Attorney General. The settlement agreement is a surprise since Trump had said during his presidential campaign that he would never settle Trump University’s lawsuits. He said in March on Twitter that he had 98% approval rating by students and he will go to court.
Trumps University was closed in 2010 shortly after the first lawsuit. It was discovered that people were pressured to spend up to $35,000 for classes taught by professors knowing Trump’s business philosophy and strategies. It turned out that the people teaching at the president-elected business did not teach Trump’s methods.
Just the name of the enterprise, Trump University, makes you believe Donald Trump funded a high education institution. But investigations discovered that the president-elected of the United States project was a fake university. Over 6,000 students were victims of Donald Trump’s fraud.
Schneiderman announced that each plaintiff will receive restitution and Donald Trump has to pay up to $1million in penalties to New York state.
Trump’s settling does not mean that he is going to admit any wrongdoing
Donald Trump showed during his presidential campaign that he is capable of defending something that is not true no matter how overwhelming the evidence is. The Trump University scandal was an issue for his campaign, but it managed to be ignored or accepted by voters.
Donald Trump denied the accusations since the first lawsuit, and during the presidential race, he vowed that he was not going to settle. The Trump Organization stated that as Trump said on Twitter, he would have won in court. But because Trump is now the president-elected, he had to agree on the settlement to focus in America and the issues troubling the nation.
President-elect Trump was harsh on Schneiderman back in 2014 saying in a tweet that he loved kicking lightweight NY Attorney General’s ass.
Source: TIME