WASHINGTON – As Texas regulators investigated Trump University for fraud six years ago, Donald Trump’s lawyers tried the same defenses the presumptive Republican presidential nominee cited again as recently as Tuesday – that the now-defunct real-estate workshops were top-notch and the students overwhelmingly satisfied.
But internal emails reviewed by The Associated Press show the staff of then-State Attorney General Gregg Abbott weren’t buying what Trump was selling. Abbott is now the state’s Republican governor and a vocal Trump supporter.
“The consumers we have spoken with have expressed profound dissatisfaction with the Trump U course and materials,” wrote Rick Berlin, an assistant attorney general with the state Consumer Protection Division, in a June 2010 email. “They believe they were lured to the seminar by false promises and the Trump name and that they have been ripped off.”
The government emails, obtained through a public records request by the Democratic political action committee American Bridge and provided to the AP, underscores that Texas regulators thought Trump U was a scam using the lure of easy money to bilk unsophisticated students out of up to $35,000 in tuition and mentoring fees.
In his June 2010 exchange with a lawyer representing Trump, Berlin wrote that the promises made to the real-estate novices targeted by the company’s marketing campaign were “virtually impossible to achieve.” Trump University was also operating in Texas without a required business license, a criminal misdemeanor under state law, he said.