2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Did Bernie's wife commit a felony when she secured a loan for Burlington College? [View all]MADem
(135,425 posts)If I were to guess, they were about to fire her, and she negotiated a graceful exit so they could slide omeone else in there quickly instead of having her dig in her heels and fight it.
There is no "calcuation" here. When she tells the bank "Joe Blow says he'll give five grand" and Joe Blow says "That's not true" there's either some major mis-hearing or LYING going on. And the idea was to plump up the money to qualify for the loan, to buy the land the college ended up selling at a loss.
I think you need to read the article.
When actual NAMED donors are quoted as saying she misstated their pledges, there's a problem. When bank documents show that she used the "collateral" of a pledge in a ;ast will and testament FROM A GUY WHO WAS STILL ALIVE to secure a loan that needed to be serviced, there's a problem.
So no--that's not the way these deals work. She's got trouble with her personal integrity, regardless of whether or not this rises to any great scandal levels. I doubt it will, because it is chump change in the big scheme, and no one, frankly, gives a shit about that college--it's one of those places where no one fails, where rich parents park their "failure to launch" children for four to seven years while they find themselves--no grades, no syllibi, the students basically pay a fortune to do whatever the hell they want. It's a bit grifter-ish--the school, itself, and the financing. Hard to say which is worse.
But this is nothing like the email controversy against Hillary. This is about playing smoke and mirrors in order to get a bank loan to buy land that they couldn't afford to keep, and then selling it to a developer (so much for keeping those spaces "pristine" with few buildings) in order to prevent the college--the ENTIRE college--from going bankrupt.
The only thing that could be worse is if the deal was engineered in order for the developer to grab that land at a fire sale price, and someone got a kickback. No evidence of that--yet. And Sanders was long gone before the sale happened, so she'd likely be off the hook.