Donald Trump Jacked Up His Campaign’s Trump Tower Rent Once Somebody Else Was Paying It

Yssup Rider's Avatar
Drumpf has said he "loves debt."

Now he loves donors.

OPM? Just a shitty businessman? Or is this asshole ripping off his donors like he did her "students?"



Office rent soared in July after Trump’s campaign began accepting donor contributions.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/...b03d51368a82b9
WASHINGTON ― After bragging for a year about how cheaply he was running his campaign, Donald Trump is spending more freely now that other people are contributing ― particularly when the beneficiary is himself.

Trump nearly quintupled the monthly rent his presidential campaign pays for its headquarters at Trump Tower to $169,758 in July, when he was raising funds from donors, compared with March, when he was self-funding his campaign, according to a Huffington Post review of Federal Election Commission filings. The rent jumped even though he was paying fewer staff in July than he did in March.

The Trump campaign paid Trump Tower Commercial LLC $35,458 in March ― the same amount it had been paying since last summer ― and had 197 paid employees and consultants. In July, it paid 172 employees and consultants.

“If I was a donor, I’d want answers,” said a prominent Republican National Committee member who supports Trump, asking for anonymity to speak freely. “If they don’t have any more staff, and they’re paying five times more? That’s the kind of stuff I’d read and try to make an (attack) ad out of it.”

In addition to the rent for Trump Tower space in Manhattan, Trump has paid his eponymous golf courses and restaurants more than $260,000 since his campaign and the RNC struck a joint fundraising deal in mid-May, after he essentially locked up the GOP nomination. On May 18, the day the fundraising deal was announced, Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach was paid $29,715; Trump National Golf Club in Jupiter, Florida, was paid $35,845; and Trump Restaurants LLC was paid $125,080, according to FEC records. Such large payments were much rarer when Trump was self-funding.

It’s unclear from the campaign filings the purpose of the golf course and restaurant payments, although both of the Florida golf courses hosted Trump campaign news conferences in March.

The Trump campaign on Tuesday responded that it had expanded into larger quarters. “Also, Mr. Trump makes a personal contribution of $2 million per month to the campaign, obviously a much higher amount than rent,” the statement said.

It did not, however, address the question of why the campaign needed more space when it had a smaller staff.

The FEC filings show that Trump began increasing the rent at Trump Tower starting with the May 31 payment of $72,800. The Trump campaign paid $110,684 in rent on June 9, and $169,758 on July 10.

The campaign’s number of paid employees and consultants went from 166 in May, to 139 in June, to 172 in July. How many of those actually worked in Trump Tower cannot be determined from the FEC filings, although typically only a small fraction of a presidential campaign’s staff works in the headquarters building. Last autumn, only about a dozen of the campaign’s several dozen paid employees worked in Manhattan.

Trump continues to fly to campaign events on his personal Boeing 757 airliner, even though the aging jet burns some $10,000 in fuel every hour. That has made air travel one of the biggest expense categories for his campaign. In July alone, $495,000 went to Trump’s company that owns the plane.

Prior to May, three-quarters of the $59 million spent by Trump’s campaign had come out of his own pocket ― meaning that whatever Trump charged his campaign for rent was largely coming from Trump himself.

That situation is now entirely reversed. Trump’s money makes up a tiny percentage of his campaign’s spending. The bulk now comes from outside donors, both small-dollar givers and those writing maximum-limit checks of $2,700.

“Nobody cares when you’re spending your own money, but when you’re spending the donor’s $27, that could cause problems,” the RNC member said, adding that small donors especially may not be sympathetic to Trump’s extravagance. “Most campaigns run on a much tighter budget.”

For many months, Trump’s campaign prided itself on its low-rent operation. It invited reporters in to tour its headquarters on the fifth floor of Trump Tower that had once been used as production offices for “The Apprentice” TV show, which starred Trump. Photos and video from those tours show work space with unfinished ceilings, makeshift drywall partitions, and only a few campaign workers.

Commercial real estate is available in the midtown Manhattan neighborhood in the range of $70 per square foot annually, although Trump has charged more than that. Trump Tower rented 9,000 feet of office space in December at $120 per square foot, but has been unable to rent a 15,000 square-foot office that includes six terraces overlooking Fifth Avenue, even at a discounted rent of $90 per square foot.

Democrat Hillary Clinton has been leasing two entire floors in a Brooklyn office building totaling 80,000 square feet since the start of her campaign. The rent for that space has been about $212,000 per month. Her campaign staff is also several times the size of Trump’s, numbering more than 700 for the better part of a year.


Some of the unfinished office space in Trump Tower that the Trump campaign had been paying $35,000 a month for until May. The campaign paid nearly $170,000 for its Trump Tower space in July.

This post has been updated with comments from Trump’s campaign.
I B Hankering's Avatar
Actually, you Mussulman-luvin, Hitler worshipping, lying, hypocritical, racist, cum-gobbling golem fucktard, HDDB, DEM, intelligent voters are more concerned about how foreign donors keep hildebeest's most loyal minions on a payroll working at cross-purposes to good ethics and the law.
Yssup Rider's Avatar
You mean the ones who show up at Drumpf rallies?

Or the ones who grip about it here?
  • Tiny
  • 08-23-2016, 05:42 PM
Yssup's article was not an opinion piece. It was not an editorial. However, it included the following at the end:

Editors note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims - 1.6 billion members of an entire religion - from entering the U.S.

I thought the Huffington Post was about as objective as the New York Times or the Wall Street. Those newspapers, however, would never in a million years include something like that about Trump or Clinton in a news piece. And actually not even on their editorial pages in that way, as an "editors note".

So I guess the Huffington Post is more along the lines of Moveon.org or Breitbart.com. That's the last time I'll read anything from their site. They can't be taken seriously.

Interesting story though Yssup. I see other sources besides Huffington are saying something similar.
The_Waco_Kid's Avatar
Drumpf has said he "loves debt."

Now he loves donors.

OPM? Just a shitty businessman? Or is this asshole ripping off his donors like he did her "students?"

opps! you just stepped in a pile of poop of your own making Assy poo ..


GUESS WHAT???? The Clintons have their own dealing with a "University", also with students who claim they were misled and charged huge amounts of tuition, most of which went to pay Bill Blythe .... 16 MILLION dollars over 5 years. he resigned just days before his whore wife declared her candidacy.

Assup, this is why i don't put you on ignore. you make such a fool of yourself it's amusing.

ahahahahaha SNICK!!!!!!

as usual your attempts at "intellectual superiority" FAIL!! ahaha

keep trying we need the laughs

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archive...ty-scandal.php

Posted on June 9, 2016 by Steven Hayward in Bill Clinton, Higher education
The Clinton University Scandal?

Everyone knows about the problems with Trump University. Trump should just be glad that Trump U didn’t have a Division I NCAA football team, or else he might well have Title IX complaints to go with the class action civil suit.





But did you know that Bill Clinton was a university chancellor? I didn’t either. There he is, over to the left. Moreover, he was paid $16 million by Laureate International Universities to be their “honorary” chancellor. Just think how much Slick Willie could have pulled down if he’d been a real chancellor. Just what is Laureate International University? It’s the parent company of Walden University, a mostly online, for-profit diploma mill that is facing the same kind of civil suits and fraud allegations as Trump University. Funny how the media seems to be uninterested in this story.
Jonathan Turley reports:
Laureate Education has been sued over such programs as its Walden University Online offering, which many have alleged is a scam designed to bilk students of tens of thousands of dollars for degrees. Students says that they were repeatedly delayed and given added costs as they tried to secure degrees, leaving them deeply in debt.

The respected Inside Higher Education reported that Laureate Education paid Bill Clinton an obscene $16.5 million between 2010 and 2014 to serve as an honorary chancellor for Laureate International Universities. While Bill Clinton worked as the group’s pitchman, the State Department funneled $55 million to Laureate when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state. That would seem a pretty major story but virtually no mainstream media outlet has reported it while running hundreds of stories on the Trump University scandal.

Assup insert your reBUTTal here .. if you have one ..

There was even a class action — like the Trump University scandal. Travis et al v. Walden University LLC, was filed in U.S. District Court in the District of Maryland but dismissed in 2015. It is not clear why it was dismissed. However, the size of the contract to Clinton, the payment from State and the widespread complaints over alleged fraud should warrant a modicum of attention to the controversy. The controversy has many of the familiar complaints over fraudulent online programs that take advantage of hard working people.
Some of the disgruntled students have made claim about high pressure sales tactics and poor quality instruction that sound exactly like the complainants against Trump U.


ahahahahaha SNICK! with one click .. assup makes himself look like a stupid dick!!!

Originally Posted by Yssup Rider

ahahahahaha you are an idiot who just stuck his wet weenie in a light socket. ZAP!!

http://nypost.com/2016/06/12/the-cli...rsity-scandal/

Kudos to George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley for asking why the media aren’t asking about the $16.5 million paid to Bill Clinton by Laureate International Universities.

For all the hundreds of stories on Trump University, nothing’s been written about the huge payments over 2010-2014 to the potential future first gentleman to serve as “honorary chancellor” of the vast for-profit education firm.

Nor about the $55 million that Hillary Clinton’s State Department sent the way of groups run by Laureate founder Douglas Becker — who happens to be a major donor to Clinton campaigns and the Clinton Foundation.

One Laureate component, mostly-online Walden University, even faced its own class-action lawsuit. In that, as Turley notes, “Students alleged that they were repeatedly delayed and given added costs as they tried to secure degrees, leaving them deeply in debt.”


Perhaps it was all on the up and up — though “honorary” jobs rarely pay $4 million a year, and Bill did quit just before Hillary began her latest presidential run.
But you’d expect a genuinely nonpartisan press to at least ask about it.


http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/...ns-one-n636786

Hillary Blasts For-Profit Colleges, But Bill Took Millions From One

by Cynthia McFadden, Anna R. Schecter and Hannah Rappleye


Since launching her bid for president Hillary Clinton has been a vocal critic of for-profit schools, pledging in speeches across the country to "crack down on predatory schools" and help students drowning in student loan debt.

"If they load students up with debt for programs that don't lead to good paying jobs, students and taxpayers should not be the only ones left holding the bag," said Clinton in a campaign speech in New Hampshire.


She has also slammed her opponent for the problems at his namesake school. Said Clinton, "[Donald Trump] is trying to scam America the way he scammed all those people at Trump University!"


But Trump isn't the only one who has profited. Over five years, former president Bill Clinton earned $17.6 million from the world's largest for-profit education company, Laureate Education, Inc. In his role as "honorary chancellor," Clinton has traveled the world on Laureate's behalf, extolling the virtues of the school.


And some two dozen former and current students at Laureate's flagship school in the U.S. -- an online, for-profit school called Walden University -- told NBC News they feel victimized by the kind of practices Clinton has promised to fight. A 2015 study found Walden students had compiled the second-highest debt load of any school in the U.S.



Walden University logo.
"We pursued [our degrees] because we wanted to be successful and not be put in poverty," said Sondra Beall-Davis, a current PhD candidate at Walden and a former corporate consultant, who now owes over $200,000 in student loan debt incurred during her time at Walden. "Now you've taken me from a successful career to poverty."
'Here for Good'

According to tax returns released by the Clinton campaign, the Clintons earned a total $22 million from for-profit education companies. Laureate's paychecks to Bill Clinton made up the bulk of that, with $17.6 million going to Clinton in his role as honorary chancellor from 2010 to 2015. He quit that role 12 days before Hillary Clinton announced her run for president. A spokesperson told NBC News Tuesday that his five-year contract expired at that time.


Laureate bills itself as "Here for Good" and "the biggest university network in the world," and made about $4.3 billion in revenue last year. The bulk of Laureate's revenues come from their international schools - the company has about 800,000 students in more than 70 schools in 30 countries. Walden University is the company's flagship school in the United States.


While a 2012 Senate investigation of for-profit schools described an "enrollment driven culture" at Walden, it also concluded that the school was "perhaps the best of any company examined" and that its "students are faring well." Walden is also accredited, unlike Trump University. (Trump and his attorneys deny that Trump University, now defunct, was a scam, and say all but a few students were satisfied.)

The education company and the ex-president maintain ties that go back years, with former appointees in Clinton's administration in high positions at the company. Walden's current President, Jonathan Kaplan, worked in Clinton's administration, serving as special assistant to the president for economic policy. One of Walden's colleges, the Richard W. Riley College of Education and Leadership, is named for Richard Riley, former secretary of the US Dept. of Education under Clinton and a former board member at Laureate.


Laureate's CEO, Douglas Becker, is a longtime Democratic donor and friend to the Clintons. Laureate has donated between $1 and $5 million to the Clinton Global Initiative, and has partnered with the Clinton Global Initiative on several projects, including a commitment to the charity to offer scholarships to teachers around the world.


An aide to Bill Clinton told NBC News that the former president "engaged with students at Laureate's campuses worldwide and advised Laureate's leadership on social responsibility and increasing access to higher education," and that "he was pleased to support their mission to expand access to higher education, particularly in emerging markets."


In 2009, according to emails released by the State Department, Hillary Clinton wrote to a top aide that she wanted to add Laureate Education to the guest list for a State Department dinner on education. Describing Laureate as "the fastest growing college network in the world," Clinton said the company was "started by Doug Becker, who Bill likes a lot."
"It's a for-profit model that should be represented," Clinton added. Laureate was added to the list.


Experts say that for-profit schools have led to skyrocketing student loan debt. Today, Americans owe about $1.2 trillion in outstanding student loan debt.
"They're disproportionately responsible for the amount of debt out there," said Dr. Kevin Kinser, head of Penn State's Department of Education and Policy Studies. "They are extremely reliant on student tuition as their sole source of revenue and at the same time extremely reliant on federal financial aid, in particular federal student loans."
The Obama Administration's efforts to curb the worst practices of the industry have resulted in new regulations and investigations of for-profit schools like ITT Tech and Corinthian College.


Josh Schwerin, spokesperson for the Clinton campaign, said, "Hillary Clinton has made it clear that all for-profit institutions should be held to the same standards and she will crack down on law-breaking for-profits by expanding support for federal regulators to enforce laws against deceptive marketing, fraud, and other illegal practices."

'Vicious Cycle'

In 2011, Clinton stood at a podium and told an auditorium full of eager Walden graduates about a conversation he had with Laureate's CEO, Doug Becker. "I just asked Doug, I said 'Have all the Laureate colleges in the United States converted to the Direct Loan program," Clinton said, according to a transcript of the commencement address. "And he said, 'Yes.'


"The law now says if you get a federally-supported student loan, you have the absolute right to pay it back as a small percentage of your income for up to 20 years," Clinton added. "Means no one ever has to drop out again in the United States. This is a very, very important thing."


The federal student loan program has been good to Walden University. According to several studies, Walden students carry some of the highest student loan debts in the country. A 2015 Brookings Institution study found that by 2014 Walden students had accumulated $9.8 billion in debt, second only to the University of Phoenix. A 2015 study by the Center for American Progress found that Walden students received the most federal graduate loans in the 2013-2014 academic year, with over $756 million. The 2012 Senate investigation found that over 70 percent of the school's revenue came from federal financial aid programs.


NBC News gathered five current and former graduate students at Walden. Collectively, they hold over $1.1 million in federal student debt incurred during their studies at Walden.

They told NBC News that they believe Walden recruiters misled them about the time it would take to finish their doctoral degrees - that the school said their student-loan financed degrees would take only a handful of years to complete and lead to future job opportunities.


After Jody McGrath earned a master's degree in psychology, she began searching for a doctoral program in health psychology and reached out to Walden. "I called them, and was told it would be a two-year for my coursework and then 16 to 24 months to do my dissertation," McGrath said.
Douglas Becker, chairman and chief executive officer of Laureate Education Inc., listens during a panel discussion at the Clinton Global Initiative Latin America in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on Tuesday, Dec. 10, 2013. Dado Galdieri / Bloomberg via Getty Images
McGrath, like other students NBC News spoke to, said that high faculty turnover rates, disorganization and a lack of oversight seemed to perpetuate her enrollment at Walden.
She completed her coursework, which she called "rigorous," in two years, with a 3.6 GPA. But it took her six years -- and four committee chairs -- to get her dissertation approved. Her first chair told her after a full year of correspondence that she was "doing the wrong study," McGrath said, and that she would also have to find a new chair.


McGrath said over the years she struggled to find new advisors and get feedback on her work. "There were times that I sent 25 to 30 emails just praying, praying that somebody would write me back," she said.


"I thought at some level it was me," McGrath said. "That I wasn't working hard enough. As crazy as this sounds, that I thought when I got a new chair there was hope. This time it will be better. So it's just this vicious cycle that you get into."


Today, McGrath is over $400,000 in debt. She has finally earned her PhD. But, she said, Walden "failed me."

"I was there emailing," she said. "I was turning in my work. I have no problem paying for a four-year doctorate program. But I have an extra four years tacked onto my loan that wasn't my fault."

Lehnee Dopwell, a public school teacher, said she left the PhD program after incurring $100,000 in debt. Dopwell said she realized too late that her struggle to keep finding new chairs and receive meaningful feedback on her proposals was preventing her from advancing in the program.


"When they see that you really, really want to be in there, they jump at you," said Dopwell. "[The recruiter] called a lot, and he kept telling me, 'Five years. Don't worry.'"
"When I was seeing issues with my thesis in regards to the chairs, in regards to them sending me back the document the same way I sent it to them is when I realized that something was wrong," Dopwell said. "But the sales pitch is basically you're going to be done in whatever time you want it to be done."


A review of online boards, court filings and Better Business Bureau complaints shows similar charges. A federal lawsuit filed in Maryland in 2015 by two Walden students, which was later settled out of court, alleged that "Walden University's breach of its own rules thus unnecessarily prolongs students' efforts to obtain their degrees, and results in students extending their enrollment in their respective dissertation or thesis course and paying additional tuition."


Online message boards contain similar complaints. "The lack of communication is absolutely appalling. I once waited 9 weeks...yes WEEKS for a reply to an email," reads one. "Once you are done with your required coursework and begin the dissertation process, you are essentially stuck."

Walden University told NBC News it could not speak to students' specific stories, but a spokesperson for the university said that "Walden University's overall student loan cohort default rate is well below the national average for all universities, non-profit and for-profit. This well-established financial aid metric clearly demonstrates that Walden students overall are far less likely to default and able to manage and pay their federal student loans."


"According to third-party research, the average student loan amount for graduate students at Walden is comparable to the graduate students who attended non-profit universities. More than 80 percent of Walden students are enrolled in graduate programs, which are high quality, rigorous, and challenging."

Other students who spoke to NBC News said they had an overwhelmingly positive experience at Walden.

and so did many Trump U students....


Derek Olson, 50, is a public school teacher and earned his PhD from Walden this past January. He received a scholarship that covered his tuition at Walden. Earning a doctoral degree is a "very difficult task," he said, and Walden's standards are rigorous -- it took six years for him to earn his degree.


"I would never discount or dispute anyone's personal experience," Olson said. "But my experience at Walden was positive, it was rigorous and it was relevant to my classroom work. It really has opened up doors for me."
Another graduate student at Walden, Cynthia Hickman, told NBC News she had a positive experience at Walden and didn't have to deal with any change in committee chairs.


While Dopwell left the PhD program, the other students who spoke to NBC News continued on in their respective programs. One, McGrath, earned her degree. Two are continuing to work on their dissertations. One, after reaching his graduate student loan limit, left Walden.


"How do I tell my children," asked Sondra Beall-Davis, "that after all these years education is key and if you do the right thing, good things will happen? ... [They say], 'Didn't work for you, big mama.'"


Beall-Davis said she'd like Bill Clinton to forgive the Walden students' loans.

"He can do that. Because see, I don't think he'd want to be representative of something that is basically unfair or unethical. He can't give us back our years, but he can give us back our dignity."


Today the students say they are stuck with debts they can never hope to pay off in their lifetime. When asked why they continued to take out loans to finance their Walden degree, some said the value of the education they purchased seemed to outweigh the debt.


"High achievers don't quit," McGrath said. "It's like we'd get these glimmers of hope and we're like, "OK, if we just put nose to the grindstone, we are going get it and we're going to get that dream."
DJT2016! Say's Independents and Democrats in OHIO...


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ag8dmCQN0E