Donald Trump is firing back at New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, claiming the AG’s lawsuit over his Trump University is a ploy for publicity “to propel him toward being the next governor of New York.”
The Donald, who knows a few things about publicity himself, denies defrauding more than 5,000 people through his Trump University, now called the Trump Entrepreneur Initiative (TEI), which offers real estate-investing techniques used by the billionaire developer.
Trump’s explosive response, filed in Manhattan Supreme Court on Thursday, reads: “New York State Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman has only one goal on his mind: to use the significant publicity from a lawsuit against famed real estate developer and business mogul Donald J. Trump to propel him toward being the next governor of the state of New York.”
The papers call Schneiderman’s suit a “no-holds-barred quest to make a name for himself and propel his own political ambitions.”
Trump accuses the AG of sucking up to his family for financial support for his next political move while misleading them about the case.
He charges: “While simultaneously soliciting campaign contributions, political support and other personal favors from members of the Trump family . . . Schneiderman repeatedly assured them that . . . The case against TEI was ‘very weak’; He had ‘no intention of going forward’ and would ‘never file the lawsuit’; and, He was merely ‘going through the motions’ to satisfy lower members of his staff.”
Trump says TEI earned a 98 percent approval rating from students. He alleges the AG “ignored one of the basic tenets of any first-year law class: that you cannot file a lawsuit years after the statute of limitations has already expired.”
Schneiderman’s case against Trump claimed the organization was not licensed to call itself a university. But Trump insists it was changed to TEI in 2010 — and the three-year statute of limitations had expired. Schneiderman’s office did not respond to requests for comment.