These lawyers are representing the church that lost 2 million from this deal. I would imagine if these allegations can be proved then the church can sue or have a better case against the Sanders couple.
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Lawyers Accuse Sanders of Illegal, Unethical Influence on Wife's Disastrous Loan
- Thread starter Spoiled Milk
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These lawyers are representing the church that lost 2 million from this deal. I would imagine if these allegations can be proved then the church can sue or have a better case against the Sanders couple.
BlastProcessing
Member
The lawyers want to get paid. This is a $10 million lawsuit waiting to happen. They are timing this to hit Sanders when he is weak. I would assume they have been waiting to spring this for a while. The political tide is turning against him, the media is starting to be more critical of him, and, because he is running out of money, he needs to be out there hustling interviews. Their timing is pretty good.
The more coverage this gets the more likely they get a trial or a settlement.
Lazy vs Crazy
Member
No they represent members of the parish which is super different from representing the church.
BlastProcessing
Member
I mean, how did she get that loan? Why did she sign something saying that the school had way more money than it did? This whole thing happened after the mortgage crisis. Was nobody paying attention?
I am not even arguing that any of it was illegal, just titanically bad judgement.
The bank probably thought it would be a safe move given it's a school. I mean it's not like colleges go under every day.
davepoobond
you can't put a price on sparks
i knew this election was missing a little bit more drama.
Same here. The letter doesn't seem to offer much proof of Bernies wrongdoing, just his wife's.
Imperfected
Member
They were probably sitting on this until the General Election, hoping that if Sanders was the nominee he'd be more willing to throw money at it to make it go away.
Now that it's clear he's not going to be the nominee, they may as well fire it off while he's at least still in the spotlight and not back to being a relative nobody to the general public.
excelsiorlef
Member
This is almost assuredly total bullshit, though can't help but think at how fitting it would as an end to Sanders' ridiculous campaign.
That said this thread sure is interesting,the tone is completely more inclined to consider that Sanders is guilty, which would have been unfathomable even a week ago.
Just interesting how bad this week as had on Sanders.
That said this thread sure is interesting,the tone is completely more inclined to consider that Sanders is guilty, which would have been unfathomable even a week ago.
Just interesting how bad this week as had on Sanders.
Intheflorsh
Banned
We'll see, the media hasn't made a peep about this and the letter was sent four days ago.
PhoncipleBone
Banned
They might be verifying the story instead of running with just the letter. Or it might all be bullshit and they aren't running it because of that. Give it a few more days.
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
That's what concerns me. The GOP have made a circus out of a nonsense email scandal, can you imagine what they would have done with this?
Orbis Tabula
Member
Yeah, I mean, for the record, I'm still pretty skeptical of this.
Enter the Dragon Punch
Banned
what's nonsense about the e-mails?
User 463088
Banned
Um... Everything?
MisterFalcon
Member
If you're Jane Sanders, wife of a powerful politician you can get things done that other people can't. It does not require a call from Bernie or outright statements of any refusal having consequences, that's just how it works. To prevent this you'd have to ban close relatives of politicians from any function where this kind of thing is an advantage or have them remain behind the scenes and leave their name out of any dealings. Which is pretty much impossible in 2016 and the amount of information freely available through technology and legislation.
Bonen no Max'd
Banned
Even if this is probably nothing, it really does crush the idea that Sanders has been seriously vetted by the media and that his GE polls are meaningful. If Kerry's Purple Heart can be made into a negative, the field day the Republicans could have with this guy would be pretty absurd.
Part of me is really petty and wants this to be true but it's probably better if it isn't.
Part of me is really petty and wants this to be true but it's probably better if it isn't.
You Are Viewtiful
Member
I'm starting to feel schadenfreude whenever juicy Sanders gossip comes up. Am I awful?
No, you are viewtiful.
You Are Viewtiful
Member
<3 you're viewtiful, it's true.
MisterFalcon
Member
-Burlington College, headed by Jane Sanders decides they need to move to a bigger location
-They decide a $10 million building owned by the church is the location they want
-The college gets a loan for the $10 million. This is where the possibility of undue influence comes up and the college may have gotten a loan it could not really afford and any other college not headed by the wife of a senator would be refused.
-To pay for this the college needed to attract more students which they did not.
-The cost of the $10 million loan causes Burlington College to collapse
From the letter I assume the $10 million was not paid at once to the church but over time and now the college is bankrupt there is $2 million that will never be paid.
What makes this so juicy is that Jane Sanders got a $200,000 handout after being fired for ruining the school, something that Bernie Sanders is so extremely against. It's also on the family income statement as 'sabbatical salary'.
PeakPointMatrix
Member
Surely this is making rounds in the Bernie subreddit.
WhateverItTakes
Banned
I was literally just checking to see how people were reacting.
Nope. Nothing there. r/S4P is pages and pages of how Bernie still somehow has a chance and Hillary should totes be indicted. r/Politics is somehow even more vindictive and is I swear about 50% negatives for Clinton (the same negatives posted multiple times in some cases). Of course the top post right now is Bernie saying he'd legalize the marijaunas, which I'm pretty sure is near-peak reddit. Ideally there'd be a place where news is posted without a bias, but for Reddit and GAF because the links are crowdsourced, you can end up missing things. Reddit is infinitely worse for this of course because a story that the audience simply doesn't like won't make it to the top of the pile.
Just makes me wonder about the importance of your sourcing. People who are 'politcally active' but use one community as a source for their news are gonna end up with opinions even slightly to one side. Redditors are pushing the anti-Clinton thing hard. Personally, I think reading Hill-Gaf's posts over the last couple months has really soured me on Sanders as a whole. Shit like what's in the OP doesn't help either.
I wonder if Reddit people read GAF if they'd have their views change like I did. Or vice versa I guess, though I've been finding reddit as a whole super obnoxious lately...
Oh you know, Clinton builds a super secret server in her basement, sends classified emails over it, maybe gets haxxored, wacky hijinks ensue.
Also something about blackberries. Yummy
Frozenprince
Banned
Plus the $500,000 (it should be noted that the school was $345,000 away from clearing the debt completely from the banks after she left) she took for their daughter to run a "woodworking" school.
Isn't the bank (or whoever they got the loan from) on the hook for paying the church?
Oh well, I guess we don't know the details of the transaction.
Heavy_D206
Member
If Sanders gets automatically attached to a bad deal his wife made then I guess Hillary definitely should be attached to each and every one of Bill's multiple scandals right?
This is a slippery slope for Hillary.
This is a slippery slope for Hillary.
Hillary is nothing to do with it - this law firm has a very long history of attacking Clinton.
And the accusation is this his office applied pressure to the bank to grant the loan, using his status as a USA senator. That's not just 'you're partner did something shitty', it's a direct accusation of corruption.
So Jane Sanders became the head of a college. Then took out a 10 million dollar loan through her husband acting improperly, for the purpose of causing the college to fail, so that she could get fired and get a $200k severance package? You realize how stupid this sounds, right? I'm not sure how that can be called "juicy". A severance package from a job like that isn't a problem. It's 50 million dollar bonuses that CEOs get that is the issue.
The only problem here would be the $10 million and whether or not the bank gave the money due to Senator Sanders acting improperly.
MisterFalcon
Member
I don't think Jane Sanders wanted the college to fail. She made a big miscalculation in how much to expand to new, expensive location and the college went bankrupt because of that decision. And for a college with an annual budget of 4 million the $200,000 is quite a lot of money. A severance package of 5% the company revenue while it is already in financial trouble is very generous.
This week has been like a train wreck in slow motion for Bernard. Even if this turns out to be nothing of substance just having this in the news cycle on top of everything else can't be good. Can't even imagine what his base would do if this is somehow proven true. You talk about disillusion with democracy and voting, the fall from Bernard's tower would be immense if he turns out to be a true wolf in sheep's clothing.
In the end this is probably nothing; and as bad as Bernard has been acting, I wouldn't even wish it on him. I will say though that true or not, this is the kind of thing that would sink a GE campaign. Trump gets a hold of this and it's nonstop ads about 'Hypocrite Bernie' and 'Calamity Jane'; how they destroyed this school; used their influence with the big banks to do it and then got a nice payday on top of it. Blood in the streets style vicious. You know Trump would bring it up every single debate as well and spoon feed it all to the audience. This would be the timeline where you watch a man's heart ripped out on live tv.
In the end this is probably nothing; and as bad as Bernard has been acting, I wouldn't even wish it on him. I will say though that true or not, this is the kind of thing that would sink a GE campaign. Trump gets a hold of this and it's nonstop ads about 'Hypocrite Bernie' and 'Calamity Jane'; how they destroyed this school; used their influence with the big banks to do it and then got a nice payday on top of it. Blood in the streets style vicious. You know Trump would bring it up every single debate as well and spoon feed it all to the audience. This would be the timeline where you watch a man's heart ripped out on live tv.
n64coder
Member
The documents show that there was a mortgage of $6.5M with People United Bank and a second mortgage of $3.5M with the church. I don't know how it adds up to a loss of $2M for the church but the diocese did have some skin in this situation.
From what your saying it sounds to me that the college was paying 2 loans. The church loan was probably on a longer term so only $1.5m was paid back by the time the college went under. So church got 6.5 up front and 1.5 in repayments (roughly, they could be including interest on the term of the loan).
A lawyer wrote Sanders a letter requesting documents that could implicate his involvement in his wife's (seemingly easy to prove) fraud.
...ok?
Weird how so many Sanders supporters seem to miss that last bit
D
Deleted member 231381
Unconfirmed Member
This is probably nothing, although it adds to a terrible news cycle for the Sanders campaign, but if true it would be both disastrous and deeply disappointing.
benicillin
Banned
The lawyers just want a payday and, given the stuff they've said about Clinton as well, probably just want to make any democrat look bad while they can. It's pretty likely that this is all strongly worded BS to capitalize on Bernie and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week.
LOL, I am now convinced that you are a comedic genius.
KonradLaw
Member
TIme to make America great again, obviously.
Ether_Snake
å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®
The document says the school had to provide proof of having the 2 millions, yet she signed it and they considered that proof?
Sounds fishy on the bank's end.
Plus if the bank did give the loan as a result of influence from Sanders, it means the bank is doubly fishy in this; they want proof of the school (not Jane) having 2m, they never got it, and made the loan anyway after being "influenced" yet still never getting the proof?
And there is no board st the college to approve the request for a 2m loan? Just Jane deciding so and signing a paper? Again, fishy.
I'm going to guess the bank accepted as a result of negotiations due to the lack of 2m, not that the school or Jane faked it.
Now that could be as a result of influence from Sanders, tbd.
The real questionable part we know of is the 200,000$ golden parachute.
Also, wouldn't surprise me that this firm is hoping for Hillary's camp to use this story only to bring something similar up on the Clintons, to force both to acquiesce. If Sanders give in, and Clinton attacked him on this, and then the law firm brought something similar on the Clintons they would pretty much have to settle quickly.
Sounds fishy on the bank's end.
Plus if the bank did give the loan as a result of influence from Sanders, it means the bank is doubly fishy in this; they want proof of the school (not Jane) having 2m, they never got it, and made the loan anyway after being "influenced" yet still never getting the proof?
And there is no board st the college to approve the request for a 2m loan? Just Jane deciding so and signing a paper? Again, fishy.
I'm going to guess the bank accepted as a result of negotiations due to the lack of 2m, not that the school or Jane faked it.
Now that could be as a result of influence from Sanders, tbd.
The real questionable part we know of is the 200,000$ golden parachute.
Also, wouldn't surprise me that this firm is hoping for Hillary's camp to use this story only to bring something similar up on the Clintons, to force both to acquiesce. If Sanders give in, and Clinton attacked him on this, and then the law firm brought something similar on the Clintons they would pretty much have to settle quickly.
Dash_Riprock
Member
His wife got $200,000 for incompetence.
Some socialist.
Some socialist.
TheLaughingStock
Member
I'm not familiar with verification docs used for schools but you'd have to see the paper trail or whatever the lender put on the computer about this loan.
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