Behind the Bastards - Part Two: The Complete, Insane Story of Trump University

Episode Date: March 7, 2019

In Part Two, Robert is joined again by Miles Gray (The Daily Zeitgeist) to discuss now-defunct Trump University. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Alphabet Boys is a new podcast series that goes inside undercover investigations. In the first season, we're diving into an FBI investigation of the 2020 protests. It involves a cigar-smoking mystery man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse look like a lot of guns. But are federal agents catching bad guys or creating them? He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science?

And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences in a life without parole. My youngest? I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's Behind the Bastards and I'm Robert Evans. Miles Gray is my guest today. Yes, hi, I'm from Liverpool. Now, let's talk about Trump University. Oh yes, where were we?

Alright, part two. From mid-2007 to 2010, Trump University was essentially a series of free classes that actually only taught you how to raise your credit limit in order to pay tens of thousands of dollars to Donald Trump. The instructors, or teachers, for these classes were really salespeople who got 25% of the revenue from everybody who signed up for these paid programs. The very best of these instructors was a fellow named James Harris. According to Stephen Gilpin, quote, He didn't have a background in education or even a college degree. When he was hired in 2008, he had a felony conviction for ramming into someone's truck with his own truck eight years earlier. And according to 2011 divorce filings in Gwinnett County, Georgia, Harris had threatened to kill his ex-wife and tried to have her Range Rover repossess the day after she filed a restraining order against him. Harris was so volatile, according to court records, that his children's school went on lockdown one day when he picked up the kids.

Oh, no. This is Trump University's best professor. Also, why are we still calling him professor? Because it's so funny that you would call that man a professor. He's a professor of ramming cars. Trump University did run a background check on Harris, but the investigators did not flag his criminal record. They were also apparently not able to verify whether he graduated from high school, though Harris later told CNN that he did graduate. The report didn't uncover any real estate experience either, according to court records.

There is no evidence that James Harris ever held a real estate license. So, James was by far the best of the Trump U instructors. They actually filmed some of his lectures to play for other instructors because he was so good at like, their goal was to sell 25% of the room on a package, a new package in every one of these things. And he always met or exceeded his goal. Wait, so how many salespeople would be working a given seminar? You know, sometimes three or four, it sounds like. But they knew that they needed to sell one fourth of the people who came. Oh, so that as a sales team, not like as each individual salesperson.

I think it was different depending on, I think some seminars had multiple and some it was just James coming in there. So I think it was different each time, like they had a variety of different things. Now, James had a number of tactics, but the most of them boiled down to just repeatedly promising his audience on Fath Mobile Riches. His favorite line was, apparently, write this down, your license plate when I'm done with you is gonna say paid for. Got that? Wow. There you go. That's, you know, that's not what I would do.

It's not what I would do. I can see why it would work. I would go around and I would say everybody, get out a piece of paper. Okay. And on it. Now, don't tell anybody. Think in your mind, right? In your mind's eye, when you are actually making all the millions of dollars with this Trump program, what's the first car you're going to buy?

Now, don't, it doesn't have to be a new car. It can be a car you've always wanted because money can get you anything. Even an old Corvette your grandpa used to drive. Okay. Now, I want you to write down the make and model of that car. Okay. Now, put it in your pocket because what I want you to know is in about, let's say, what's today? February, let's just call it February 7th.

Okay. In one month from today, March 7th, you are going to be pulling out that piece of paper and looking in the rear view mirror of that car. One month. And I congratulate all of you. Boom. Sold. Sold half the room. Jesus Christ, Miles.

I just love. Ugh. I love these. Again, the balls. Anyone else would feel so terrible to be like, I'm charging these people. I'm selling you nothing. And then on top of it, you know they're desperate. And you're saying, you're going to have everything.

Don't worry. Don't worry. I mean, anyone who isn't a total, you would have to know that some of these people are in pretty bad situations. Yeah. They would show up at a Trump seminar if everything's perfect. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Or I mean, some people might, things might be perfect, but they just don't know that they're $70,000 away from blowing it on the wind.

All right. Well, okay. What was the name again? Jesse Miller? James Harris. I'm sorry. Once Trump University collapsed spoilers, the Washington Post sat down with Harris. His name came up more than just about any other name and complaints about Trump University because he built the most people out of the most money.

Quote from Harris. I was told to do one thing and that one thing was to show up to teach, train and motivate people to purchase Trump University products and services to make sure everybody bought. That is it. Wow. Selling the term products and services. Really? Yeah. That hurts me to hear as a products and services guy.

I know. I know. But you have to look past that. It's the bigger picture, right? Because you're looking at products and services as sort of your, I guess, life raft or life vest in a sea of debt and uncertainty. Yeah. Well, let me tell you something. I'm coming by in the fucking Titanic on that sea and I'm swooping my hand down to pull you aboard.

The SS opulence, the SS, let's just call it abundance. Okay. And I'm not afraid to share because when wealth is infinite, it doesn't matter how many ways you cut that up. It's still going to generate. Oh boy. Oh boy. Okay. So the Chicago Tribune reported that during one session, quote, Harris scolded an 18-year-old who said he might not be able to make the $1,495 class starting on a Friday because he was still in high school.

Take the day off, he told the high schooler. This is more important. This is a billionaire and I work for him and I'm going to show you how to buy and sell real estate. Wow. Take the day off, kid. Skip school, kid. As the most successful sales teacher for Trump University, Harris' strategies relied heavily on bringing Donald Trump's name into it. Here's Gilpin's book.

Wow. Trump profited an estimated $5 to $10 million from Trump University. Outside of that, Harris' pitch seems to have been a pretty standard one in the world of multi-level marketing and pyramid schemes. There are three groups of people, people who make things happen, people who wait for things to happen, and people who wonder what happened. Which are you? Which are you? Yep. Yeah, the which are you questions are always big in these.

And again, listen to The Dream, great podcast on pyramid schemes, multi-level marketing, awesome podcast. Donald Trump shows up a few times, really good podcast. One of the people taken in by James Harris was Kevin Scott, a 46-year-old employee of a pharmaceutical company. He was drawn in by quote, the picture Harris painted of making money quickly by flipping distressed and foreclosed property using other people's money. That was a major promise Harris and other sales teachers and Trump U promotional material all made. Donald Trump himself was a huge fan of talking about using other people's money to finance real estate investment schemes. Right. Although he put his own money into Trump University.

Oh. I'm sure he did things like, oh, guys, get ready, because you're going to be hooked on OPM. OPM. Other people's money. That's good. That's really good. Thank you. Kevin Scott started with a 90-minute free class and then paid $1,495 for a course by Harris, which turned into a $25,000 elite package.

Now that level of commitment entitled him to a number of benefits, including three days of one-on-one instruction with his mentor, James Harris. Here's the Chicago Tribune. Scott said his mentor accompanied him on a weekend tour of properties in Westchester. At first he was impressed, but when he tried to make a deal to buy and flip the houses, he was told each time by the banks that owned the properties that he had to have financing in place before they would consider his offers. And the non-bank hard money lenders who Harris had promised would be made available to him by Trump University were nowhere to be found, he said. It all amounts, Scott said, to a whole lot of nothing. He adds that because he tapped out his credit cards to pay the tuition, I ended up being one of those distressed properties. I now have to rent out my house and live in a small apartment.

Scott is one of what are likely to be nearly 7,000 plaintiffs in the class actions. Oh, no. Yeah, it's a bummer. Wow. Another person who swore an affidavit against Trump University was Kathleen Mies. She paid for a three-day workshop in Malta, New York. This conference included several sales teachers, one of whom was a guy named Stephen Goff. Mies later recalled, quote,

While the other Trump instructor spoke to the class, Mr. Goff pulled people aside one by one and told us that we would make money faster if we enrolled in Trump elite programs and worked with a personal mentor. Mr. Goff asked if I could come up with $25,000 to sign up for the gold elite program. I told him I had a credit card with a $30,000 limit, but I did not want to pay that much for the Trump gold elite program. I told Mr. Goff that I could not fly to the Trump elite seminars because I have a son with Down syndrome who needs to be close to a hospital in case he needs to receive his medical treatments. Goff, wanting the $5,000 he'd be guaranteed for such a sale, because he gets a quarter of it, promised Kathleen that she would make her $25,000 back in 60 days. He also promised to be her personal mentor, and eventually, she agreed and charged the program to her card. Three days after this, Stephen Goff called her up and told her that, alas, he'd be unable to mentor her, and she instead wind up working with some guy she'd never heard of. Kathleen Mies demanded a refund, which she did not get.

Now, I found that anecdote in Gilpin's book, since James Harris wound up being such a messed up guy, I wanted to learn a little bit more about Steve Goff to see if this was maybe a trend among Trump University professors. They put that they were lying, sniveling little rat men. Criminals is more what I was interested in. Oh, yeah, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on, man. Hold on, I take offense. We all get the odd school shutdown because we're so violent and angry when we come to pick up our kids. Oh, well, a car's a deadly weapon now? Yeah, people were shooting each other with cars in the Civil War.

Oh, I found an LA Times article that talked a little bit about Steve Goff's backstory. Journalist David Lazarus went to one of those free seminars and actually talked to Goff. Quote, who told me before things got started that he had bought and sold about 300 houses since getting into real estate 11 years ago. He said he had never bought or sold a house in California, which is where the seminar was. I asked Goff if he's a millionaire, he said no, he said he had been through bankruptcy, two divorces, and had his own home foreclosed upon. I love helping people, Goff said of why he now works for Trump University. I'm very passionate about helping people achieve success. What?

I mean, I've been bankrupt and lost my house, now let me teach you how to flip houses. But you don't even have money. I know. I will if you sign up for this course. Let's see, I'll teach you for lunch, can you buy me lunch? I do imagine Guilot sounding like Gil from The Simpsons. Yeah, come on, Goff. Other members of those class actions included Bob and Alex Guilot, father and son.

Bob Guilot signed up for the $35,000 Trump Gold Elite Program based largely on the promise that this would put him in a very small, in the know group of insiders who would receive special secret real estate knowledge. Mr. Guilot explained in his affidavit, for example, where Mr. Trump would be involved in building condominiums, we would get first choice at purchasing an apartment and then would be able to immediately sell it at a profit. Once he actually tried to make use of the benefits promised to him in his Trump Gold Elite membership, Guilot realized that the special secret listing he was supposed to get access to was Zillow. No. They pulled the data from Zillow. Yeah. Wow, wow, wow, wow. And then like probably put it in some other presentation.

Yeah, I think they put it in another thing. It's hot. We call this a hot. Nobody, nobody can access this. No, nobody. But Donald Trump picks these problems. Nobody in North Korea can access this. Okay.

He attended every one of the seminars he was entitled to and realized that even after paying $35,000, he was still being viewed as a cash bigot rather than a student. At every single seminar, quote, they tried to solicit more money from us. I got a picture of myself with the Trump cut out and basically very, very little else. Jesus. And were people just trying to give him like, did they have like side hustles too or they're like all even, okay, you're doing the Trump Elite program. But look, for another thousand, I'm going to show you some secrets that isn't even in here. That happened a bunch of times. Okay.

The university actually cracked down on it just because they didn't want to give him any more money. They're like, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. Taking too many bites of the apple. A number of these guys would like try to sell their own scams to people. Yeah, I mean, that's what I'm thinking. Because it's just all grifters. I'm like, damn, should I already buying that? Like, let me just get a little 500 on the side.

Grifter school. Bob demanded a refund, which he did not receive. Vanity Fair spoke with the Trump University employee, a guy named Soriel, who dealt with Bob's case. This is what he said in 2014, right as the class action suits were kicking off. I had many conversations with Bob Guillo. He could not articulate one thing that was wrong with the course. And I just got the impression that this was a guy who read about this frivolous lawsuit and was saying, hey, look, I'm going to try and get some money back, especially because he signed up for multiple courses in multiple years and had multiple very positive evaluations. And this brings us to the evaluations.

Like any good con, Trump University came with a plan to protect Donald Trump from lawsuits that would inevitably proceed because he was fleecing people out of their life savings. So we're going to get into how he did that. But you know what's not a con, Miles? The fine services and or products, I feel bad about saying products and services after that last guy. Well, let's call them goods and services. The goods and services. Barter your way on down to engage in these capitalism enterprises ads. During the summer of 2020, some Americans suspected that the FBI had secretly infiltrated the racial justice demonstrations.

And you know what? They were right. I'm Trevor Aronson, and I'm hosting a new podcast series, Alphabet Boys. The FBI sometimes you got to grab the little guy to go after the big guy. Each season will take you inside an undercover investigation. In the first season of Alphabet Boys, we're revealing how the FBI spied on protesters in Denver. At the center of this story is a raspy voiced cigar smoking man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse was like a lot of goods.

He's a shark and on the good badass way. And nasty sharks. He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to heaven. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science? The problem with forensic science in the criminal legal system today is that it's an awful lot of forensic and not an awful lot of science. And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences and a life without parole.

My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. I'm Molly Herman. Join me as we put forensic science on trial to discover what happens when a match isn't a match. And when there's no science in CSI. How many people have to be wrongly convicted before they realize that this stuff's all bogus? It's all made up. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Lance Bass, and you may know me from a little band called NSYNC.

What you may not know is that when I was 23, I traveled to Moscow to train to become the youngest person to go to space. And when I was there, as you can imagine, I heard some pretty wild stories. But there was this one that really stuck with me about a Soviet astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. It's 1991, and that man, Sergei Krekalev, is floating in orbit when he gets a message that down on Earth, his beloved country, the Soviet Union, is falling apart. And now he's left defending the Union's last outpost. This is the crazy story of the 313 days he spent in space. 313 days that changed the world. Listen to The Last Soviet on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back!

We're talking about products, services. We just did. Now we're talking about Trump University, which was actually not a product or a service. It was just a way for people to throw money in a hole. So there was an evaluation system set up in order to protect the companies from lawsuits. Because if these people sue us for stealing their money, we can point out, well, you gave us five stars. You gave us five stars. You gave us a good evaluation.

Oh, that was just a... They were inoculating themselves. They were inoculating themselves. By being like, okay, do this. Oh, well, that's weird. You said you loved it. It's the scam equivalent of when you have those court cases where a celebrity is accused of sexual assault, and someone's like, well, here's a picture of her looking smiling next to him. That happened with the Weinstein case where they pointed out, well, no, she sat next to him at the Oscars.

She's sitting on his lap. Yeah, like she doesn't look traumatized. Huh. Yeah. Huh. That's strange. Yeah. Turns out it's a good strategy for a couple of things.

Right. Yeah. If you have no soul. Even Gilpin explained quote, as noted on page 40, the playbook event staff were required to distribute surveys to all attendees and collect once completed in exchange for certificates. That's right. Each student was handed a survey to fill out and he or she did not receive their course completion certificate until the survey had been completed and turned in. The exchange was clear. You fill out the form and then we'll give you your certificate. Students have stated that the Trump team members would hover over them while they filled out the forms, making it more awkward for them to write anything critical. Trump University mentor, Tad Lignel, told the New York Times that he asked students to fill out the evaluations in front of him at restaurants and coffee shops. At that moment, vulnerable students still needed and expected his guidance. As they filled out the forms, their mindset was, I want my mentor to be my friend and I need his help. Oh, no.

In 2010, Trump University had its first legal trouble. Greg Abbott, the attorney general of Texas, opened an investigation into 30 complaints made by Texans who'd gotten fleeced by the scam. According to Gilpin's book, we pulled out of the state before the probe was completed. A few years later, Trump made two contributions to Abbott's gubernatorial campaign. One for $25,000 in July and another for $10,000 in May of 2014. It was Trump's only substantial venture into Texas politics. The governor's critics in the state Democratic Party said that Abbott was quote, on the corrupt Trump payroll. A former deputy chief of Abbott's consumer protection division, John Owens, claimed that his bosses torpedoed their request to sue Trump University for illegal business practices. A memo dated May 11, 2010, and provided to the state Texas Tribune and other media organizations, revealed that Owens and his colleagues wanted to ask the Trump University for a $5.4 million settlement. Owens, now retired, says his team had built a solid case against Donald Trump at Trump University, but was told to drop it after the school agreed to cease operations in Texas. So, bribe the governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, which, if you're a Texan, you know that all of our governors are grifters.

I mean, look, you gotta kick it up. You gotta kick it up. Man, look, you wanna fucking run shit around here? Give me my taste. Give me my cut of that pie, $35,000, to forgive $5.4 million in scamming Texans out of money. Yeah, I mean, but it's not a lot of work for the governor. No, he doesn't have any shit. Just says, eh, stop it. Yeah, now I got a little fishing boat. Greg Abbott. Can you get a fishing boat for $35,000? Or a Boston whaler? Yeah, not a great one. Some you can take out. Some you can take out. Not a John McAfee class yacht.

No, not a murder, SS murder. Someone's gonna die on that boat journey, for sure. Every picture of him, he's got like multiple guns in bed in his drinking. And a hammock in the background. Oh, John McAfee. Now, throughout all this, Trump University continued to use the 40 Wall Street address as its corporate address, despite being told by the Department of Education to stop doing that shit. After five years of this, on June 2nd, 2010, Trump University finally changed its name to the Trump Entrepreneur Initiative. Now, according to Gilpin, this was all just cover for the fact that Trump and Sexton were shutting down the university.

Michael Sexton quit his job and left the office without telling anyone. It apparently took several weeks for the employees at Trump University to realize the company no longer existed. Gilpin claims he never got his last paycheck and no one told him to stop working. Wow. Just get the fuck out. Just get the fuck out, eventually, when you realize we're not paying you anymore. Right, right, right. In August of 2013, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman filed a lawsuit against Donald Trump under the grounds that Trump University had engaged in, quote, persistent fraudulent, illegal, and deceptive conduct.

Quote from Schneiderman. Some instructors claim that a Trump degree is a bit of a college degree, and that Trump offered graduate programs, postgraduate programs, and doctorate programs. Instructors routinely referred to themselves as faculty and to the Trump University program participants as students, and then graduates after completing a course and going through graduation. Instructors represented the three-day seminar would provide special instructions to students on how to obtain private or hard money, sources of financing rather than traditional loans from banks. In fact, there is no evidence that the three-day seminars contained substantive instruction on how to raise private money, and the supposedly special database of lenders turned out to be a list photocopied from an issue of Scotsman Guide,

a commercially available magazine. Oh, fuck off. You didn't have the fucking time to just... Didn't even retype it. Yeah. It's an old camera phone pic. Now, this is where those satisfaction surveys come into play, because when the Attorney General of New York announced a lawsuit against Trump University, Trump launched a website, 98percentapproval.com.

Now defunct, the website made the case that Trump University had a 98percentapproval rating from its students. So, why was this crooked Attorney General coming after them? Oh, I thought they said they were in love. They said they were in love. Oh, interesting. Oh, now they don't like me. Interesting. Sounds like someone's just trying to get money.

Yeah, sounds like some sour grapes. There actually wound up being three big-ass lawsuits over Trump University, one in New York, one in California, and one in federal court. If you remember the time Trump was racist to that judge, Gonzalo Kiriel, this is when that happened. The cases were all settled in early 2017 as Trump took office, and the aggrieved parties won a total of $25 million, which should mean that just about everybody who got fucked over by Trump University will get their money back. Oh, really?

Yeah, I mean, $25 million, that's about what he's got with people. Oh, that's good. So, those people actually more than likely will be made whole? It seems so. At least the ones who signed on to the lawsuit, yeah, which was like 7,000 people. That's all coming out of an old billionaire Donald Trump's pocket? Quote-unquote billionaire? Yeah.

So, there's a happy-ish ending to this, because they kind of, Trump settled kind of right around the time he was being inaugurated, because they were like, I just don't want this to drag on. Right, right, right. You gotta go be the president. Wasn't there like something going on where like one person wasn't going to accept, and it was gonna like derail the whole thing? It was gonna derail it, but then the judge was like, no.

I don't know the details, but it didn't derail it. But whatever, they didn't allow that one person's decision to end up fucking it up for everybody else. Yeah, they didn't let that fuck it up for everybody else. So, unlike most stories, particularly most stories involving Donald Trump, this tale does have a happy ending. Or, sort of. Because Trump University was not the only scam Donald Trump played in the mid-oughts. In fact, it seems to have been the nibble that led him into a binge of scams.

In 2009, as Trump U was winding down, he signed a deal with Ideal Health, an MLM that sold urine testing kits that were supposed to help them formulate super multivitamins designed specifically for you. The reality of the situation is that a Trump claim to be in on this investment, that it was like a great opportunity, and I believe this is gonna be like, they specifically talked about the financial crash, and was like, in an age when all of these promises have been proven untrue, and all these sketchy finance people have screwed you guys over, I found a way for the American dream to aid hole,

and it's selling these P-testing kits to give people multivitamins. Wait, so you would pee on the thing, and then they would give you a customized vitamin thing? Yeah, yeah, yeah, Trump claimed to be intimately involved with the company, involved in formulating the programs, and like, He loves pee. Yeah, I mean, they called it the Trump network. But he loves pee. He does love pee.

He loves pee. He found another pee thing to do. Now, this company had existed before him, but afterwards, people thought that basically, it seemed kind of like the people in the ground, like he might have bought the company and was now running it, and they were like, oh, great, awesome. He's like, just send him in a big 7-Eleven big gulp cup to my bedroom. And I will sip them.

Oh, boy. Okay. The reality of the situation is that ideal health was just paying Donald Trump to give speeches at conferences and let them use his name for branding purposes. He had no actual hand in the operations of the company, nor was any of his money on the line in it. This is distinctly not what the employees of ideal health were led to believe. Well, I guess now the Trump network were led to believe.

Here's the Washington Post. Trump says he was not involved with the company's operations, but statements by him and other company representatives, as well as a plethora of marketing materials circulating online, often gave the impression of a partnership that was certain to lift thousands of people into prosperity. In fact, within a few years, the company fell on hard times, leaving some of salespeople in tough financial straits. It ultimately was acquired by another firm.

But when Trump joined forces with ideal health, he was enthusiastic about his future. When I did the apprentice, it was a long shot. This is not a long shot. Trump told a Trump network convention of at least 5,000 people in Miami in 2009. His face projected onto a giant screen. It's going to be something that's really amazing. It's going to be our company as a group. Wow.

Oh, and then he's like, this is us. This is us. Look around. This is the board. This is the board. We all work together. You're working with Donald Trump, billionaire. Anyway, I'm going to leave.

I'm going to leave. I don't know where I am actually, but you're going to be rich. Congratulations. There's more. In 2014, Donald Trump signed a deal with ACN, a telecommunications marketing firm that scammed people out of their money by trying to convince them to sell video phones in the 20 teens. The president was sued for his role in this last October. Complainants alleged that they were, once again,

led to believe Trump was actually involved in the business and believed in it. He did not disclose that he'd been paid millions of dollars in order to sell them on the company. ACN was not the only company listed on this lawsuit. The lawsuit complains that the Trump Foundation, which is ostensibly a charity, was turned by the president and his family into essentially a clearinghouse for scams. Here's the New York Times. Those business entities were ACN, a telecommunications marketing firm that paid Mr. Trump millions of dollars to endorse its products, the Trump Network, the Vitamin Marketing Enterprise, and the Trump Institute,

which the suit said offered extravagantly priced multi-day training seminars on Mr. Trump's real estate secrets. That is a different thing from Trump University. That's just Trump Enterprise. The Trump Institute started in the same time, 2005. He had two fake colleges running at the same time. But we've only known about university. No one talks about the Trump Institute. Two fake schools.

What the fuck? Two fake schools, Miles. Was it the same thing, too? The exact same? Not quite. Not quite. It was actually less of a scam. How is it less of a scam? It's cheaper? So while Trump U was at least initially seeded by Trump's own money, the Trump Institute was a series of expensive lectures run by Irene and Mike Millen, a couple with a long history of shady, get-rich, quick schemes.

Michael Sexton, CEO of Trump University, also helped to run the Trump Institute. Trump's role in the Institute was basically limited to licensing his name and claiming the business secrets taught were all things he totally learned during his long career as a businessman. A New York Times investigation later found that huge chunks of the coursebooks for the Institute were outright plagiarized from legitimate business books. This at least means there is a ghost of a chance that someone got useful information. Right. That's true. Now, the four plaintiffs, I do want to read another quote from that Washington Post article

on the giant lawsuit against the Trump Foundation, because I think it's interesting. Quote, the four plaintiffs who were identified only with pseudonyms like Jane Doe depict the Trump Organization as a racketeering enterprise that defrauded thousands of people for years as the president turned from construction to licensing his name for profit. The suit also names Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump, and Eric Trump as defendants. Hmm. So. All of this is why, in December of 2018, New York judge Salion Scarpula approved a deal to shut down the Trump Foundation for good, citing its shocking pattern of illegality.

The judge ordered that the foundations remaining 1.7 million in assets be split up amongst legitimate charities, which is where we stand now. There's still an investigation ongoing, which means that the president and all of his kids might get charged under the RICO statutes. Right. Yeah, racketeering. For racketeering. I just get hit with a RICO. For all the talk about the Mueller investigation, which I'm a fan of just because it put Paul Manafort

and Roger Stone in buying bars, I think that's all we get. But it looks like what that might uncover is no direct collusion with Russia, but just like the president was racketeering. Running a criminal enterprise. The most inept, organized crime thing. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think because also the charges that he's facing from the Southern District of New York, I think are far more potentially scary than the Mueller.

There's so many charges against him. It's fun. Because they're not limited by like, they're not handcuffed by DOJ policy or not, and dating or whatever. They're like, we're here to fucking figure out what's going on. We're here to burn this mother down. Yeah, I knew the Trump Foundation was a scam, but I didn't know it was how he ran multiple pyramid schemes, including two fake colleges. The Institute, though.

Just those two words together. Two fake colleges. I don't know why Trump University sounds more believable than the Trump Institute to me. It does sound scammy. I don't know why. And I found this out near the end of my research. I could have gone in more, but I think it's just important to know that he had two fake schools. At the same time, two fake schools.

Yeah. Hey, look. It's money, baby. The president of the United States, everybody. Yep. He's just more out there with it. That's all. Everybody's got scams.

He's just really lame and predatory. Yeah, I hate to say say this about Eric Prince, but at least he ran a company that did a business. There was a product. There was a product. And yeah, he's like, look, I'm selling chaos, baby. They made the wars work out less well for everyone involved, but they did keep their clients alive. Sure. Yeah.

That's technically all they were paid to do. They followed through on that. It's like, look, we might fucking go outside the lines in a few more than one way. We might make the whole war effort less successful by murdering civilians, but the people we're hired to not get killed will stay alive. It's weird because I'm almost like, yeah, Eric Prince building his fake war plane warms my heart more than hearing about these confidence games. It took a lot more intelligence. This is just so lazy. Such a lazy scam.

Yeah. What do you do? Tell desperate people they'll get rich if they give you money point blank. That's it. The end. Eric Prince scam is spend years setting up a series of shell companies and buying businesses around the world to gradually assemble a couple of warplanes because you just want to bomb people that badly. Donald Trump scam is, yeah, let's start a fake school and let's hire criminals to teach you. Yeah, get a truck ram over here to be the top professor, fucking professor.

Professor rammed a truck into someone. It would be just so funny just to see those videos. Like if you have those clips and just even the lower third for that be like Professor Miller. Yeah. Like, wow, that is okay. Sure. I don't know. I love.

I got to see. His name was James Miller. James Harris, I think. Miles, you want to plug a pluggable in the plug zone, the PZ? Oh, yeah. Belkin plug-in surge protectors. Oh, man. Really want to dump those out.

Surge protector family. Yeah, because they also have two built-in USB slots. So if you want to charge your phone and not worry about any surges damaging your electrical products, Belkin plug-in surge protectors. You know, I plugged in a Belkin surge protector when I was in Ireland once. It was one of those adapter things too. It was a huge spark shot. Oh, really? I tried the surge protector instantly.

You look like his name in Home Alone. Let's see. Oh, yeah. Just check out the Daily Zeitgeist, Daily News, Politics, Culture podcast that I co-host with Jack O'Brien every day on this network. Belkin is not a supporter. Belkin is not a supporter. You know, that was thirsty of me. If Belkin does want to put some money into this, I will claim that it was a different surge protector.

Yeah. Fantastic. Fantastic. That'd be a good thing to talk about too, because it's really to power dynamics. Power dynamics. Speaking of power dynamics. And also, you know, follow me on Twitter and Instagram at miles of gray. You can follow me on Twitter at App Bastards Pod.

You can't follow me on Instagram because it frightens and confuses me. Your posts would be amazing though. I don't even know what you do on it. You just show people what you see through your eyes as you see it, Robert. No, that's a bad idea for expanding this show. That is a bad idea. You can find this show on Twitter and Instagram though at App Bastards Pod. You can find it on the internet at BehindTheBastards.com.

Download that Trump University playbook for yourself. Give some of those sections a read through. Don't start at the beginning, because it's kind of boring, but go to that sales section. Really pretty. Drink it in. Pretty abusive. Yeah. The tactics, I'm curious to like actually read.

It's really disturbing when you see it written out. Yeah. Just sort of, just so plainly. Yeah. It's like a textbook written by people who all hit their spouses. It's like those same tactics though. Oh yeah, just abuse. It's just about just making you feel out of touch with your power or your own sense of agency.

Yeah. Yeah. It's remarkable. Anyway, go do something that makes you happy. Listen to a happy song. Pet a puppy. Flip a cop car. Buy a t-shirt on t-public.

Stickers, cups, crowbars. They break police vehicle windows pretty well. Right, pry open the back. Yeah. Branded behind the back just crowbar. I don't know. Light a courthouse on fire. Whatever you want to do.

Can we, can we ask people to do that? No, we can't. Don't light a courthouse on fire. Hug a courthouse. Hug a courthouse. Hug a courthouse. Hug your local courthouse today. And go to Robert University where I will teach you my secrets for losing thousands of dollars in real estate.

Hey, at least you're being honest. At least I'm being honest. If you want to lose money the Robert Evans way, you know what, the episode's over. I'm urging crimes. I'm selling nonsense. You got to cut, Sophie. You got to just stop this. Alphabet Boys is a new podcast series that goes inside undercover investigations.

In the first season, we're diving into an FBI investigation of the 2020 protests. It involves a cigar-smoking mystery man who drives a silver hearse. And inside this hearse we're like a lot of guns. Are federal agents catching bad guys or creating them? He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. No country to bring him down. With the Soviet Union collapsing around him, he orbited the Earth for 313 days that changed the world.

Listen to the last Soviet on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.