BOMBSHELL: Florida AG May Have Just Inadvertently Confirmed Bribe From Trump To Stop Investigation
June 6, 2016 Paul Phillips Justice
Florida Attorney General Bondi Asked Donald Trump For Money Knowing About Complaints Against Trump U.Late this evening, the Associated Press reported a potential bombshell in a scandal for Donald Trump that is getting really bad, really quickly. Last week, it was reported that Trump contributed $25,000 to Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi’s reelection campaignafter she had announced her office might investigate Trump University. Bondi called off the investigation after her political group received the money from Trump’s charitable foundation.
In addition, Trump contributed $35,000 to then-Texas AG and now-governor Greg Abbot after his office declined an investigation. Texas then made matters worse and more suspicious by issuing a cease and desist letter to a whistleblower claiming the non-investigation was purely political.
Now, AP is reporting Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi solicited the donation from Trump before the announcement of the potential investigation. They explain:
Marc Reichelderfer, a political consultant who worked for Bondi’s re-election effort and fielded questions on the donation at her request, told AP that Bondi spoke with Trump “several weeks” before her office publicly announced it was deliberating whether to join a multi-state lawsuit proposed by New York’s Democratic attorney general. Reichelfelder said Bondi was unaware of dozens of consumer complaints received by her office about Trump University filed before she requested the donation.
That may sound like an attempt at an innocent cover. And it very well could be. Here’s where it gets incredibly suspicious:
The documents complicate claims by Bondi’s office that she received only one consumer complaint about Trump University at the time that she decided not to join the New York investigation.
Bondi’s office said that its statement about receiving only a single complaint was accurate at the time because most of the complaints dealt with the Trump Institute, a separate corporate entity from Trump University. The Trump Institute was licensed by Trump to run his seminars, however, with Trump keeping a share of the profits. In internal emails, Bondi’s own staff appeared to lump Trump University and the Trump Institute together — as New York’s lawsuit has done.
In other words, the dodge is that Bondi asked for the donation before her office knew about people complaining about Trump University. But, according to thousands of internal documents Bondi released about the situation, that was exposed by the Orlando Sentinel just two days ago to be a lie. In fact, the AG prior to Bondi had already received numerous complaints about Trump University, as proven in the documents.
For instance, Bondi’s office originally claimed it had received “no complaints” about the Trump University (Page 3,229) since she took office.
Later, a staffer said: “Under this administration, we have received one complaint regarding Donald Trump, Trump University or Trump Entrepreneur Institute (page 4,268).
Later still, a staffer said two (page 5,142).
Another refers to five complaints about businesses under other Trump names, though it doesn’t cite a timeframe for all of them (page 1,733).
The same email also mentions 100 complaints about “The Trump Group,” but suggests those involve an unrelated businesses. (State records show another owner with the last name Trump, which wasn’t clear in the original version of this column.)
And multiple emails cite “23 complaints” about businesses related to Donald Trump while stressing that most of them were lodged before Bondi took office.
The article goes on to point out there was nearly no investigation into Trump University by Bondi’s office, according to the nearly 9,000 documents that were released. And oddly enough, even Trump has admitted it was improper:
Trump has already admitted his donation was improper. He made it from a charitable fund, which isn’t allowed.
His office also said that Bondi actually requested the money — aftercomplaints to her office had been filed.
This scandal is beginning to get worse and Donald Trump is going to have to answer some rather uncomfortable questions very soon. This situation gives the appearance of potentially illegal wrongdoing and certainly needs to be cleared up completely before the November elections roll around. |
