Bernie Sanders wants to be president.
He's completely unqualified for that and everything else. Before elected office, his career largely involved collecting unemployment. Once in office, he renamed some post offices and made a fortune (the two are unrelated).
Also he pushed a whole lot of socialism in speeches and built a cult of personality.
But there is a serious question on the horizon.
Bernie's wife (to whom he diverted campaign money) is under FBI investigation.
Jane Sanders, Bernie’s wife, is under FBI investigation for allegedly lying about the school’s finances on a bank loan application. The debt broke the college, which had to shut down under the crushing burden of the loan, while Jane walked away with $200K.
Some call it “federal loan fraud”, but, socialists call it wealth redistribution. Bernie and Jane have hired Rep. “Cold Cash” Jefferson’s lawyer while hoping he keeps her from following Cold Cash to a cold cell.
Carina did pretty well during her mother’s mismanagement of Burlington College. The Vermont Woodworking School got $500K from Burlington College. It was among the college’s most expensive programs with a budget over 10% that of Burlington. That’s some rather pricey woodworking.
Why did a struggling college need to spend all that money on a woodworking school?
“This was a sweetheart deal for Carina Driscoll, Jane Sanders’ daughter,” Carol Moore, Burlington's final president, said. She accused Carina's school of “gouging the college.”
Bernie had paid his wife, $80,000 for “consulting and ad placement” in his congressional campaign. What’s her expertise in ad placement? Jane was a community organizer with a degree in social work who married Bernie and honeymooned with him in the USSR.
The degree was from Goddard College, a “holistic” alternative school where students design their own curriculum. Sixteen years later, Sanders was its new provost. What qualified her for the job?
Here are some of the gory details.
Jane Sanders, wife of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., overstated donation amounts in a bank application for a $6.7 million loan the college used to purchase a prime 33-acre property on Lake Champlain in 2010.
Sanders told People’s United Bank that the college had $2.6 million in pledged donations to support the purchase of the former Roman Catholic Diocese of Burlington property on North Avenue. The college, however, received only $676,000 in actual donations from 2010 through 2014, according to figures provided by Burlington College.
That’s far less than the $5 million Sanders listed as likely pledges in the loan agreement, and less than a third of the $2.14 million Sanders had promised People’s Bank the college would collect in cash during the four-year period.
When those donations failed to materialize, the college defaulted on its loans — costing the church, which financed a portion of the sale, between $1.6 million and $2 million.
And one target of the scam was a 77-year-old woman.
Sanders, the wife of U.S. Sen Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., appears to have counted Maietta’s bequest as a cash gift that was available as collateral to finance the land deal. The 2010 loan agreement says “CBM” pledged $1 million to the school over five years in increments of $150,000, with a final payment of $100,000 in year six.
In an interview, Maietta was incredulous that Burlington College would try to use her bequest to secure a bank loan. “You can’t borrow money on the future,” she said. “That doesn’t exist.”
When she heard how her pledge was listed in the loan document, she was surprised. “They had me in increments? No, never,” Maietta said.
Maietta, who was interviewed by a federal investigator at her home in West Palm Beach, Florida, said she agreed to give the school donations in addition to the bequest. She said she gave less than $100,000.
Maietta was adamant that she never signed anything with the college, despite Sanders personally asking her to do so. She said she didn’t include Burlington College in her will until almost a year after the college purchased the diocese land.
So the question becomes, if Jane Sanders is convicted, will Bernie Sanders pardon his wife?
Trump has been repeatedly asked this about his associates. It's only fair to ask it about the Bride of Bernie.
Will Bernie pledge not to pardon his wife? Unless he does, then his presidential run starts to look like a way of getting wife off the hook.