UH-OH: ‘Discrepancies’ Emerge in Jane Sanders’ Burlington College Donor List in Bank Fraud Investigation

Jane O’Meara Sanders, former president of Burlington College and wife to Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, is under federal investigation to determine if she misled a bank to obtain a loan for her previous employer. A new report by the Burlington Free Press states a number of donors are disputing the listed amount of their donations.

Burlington Free Press reports:

The lingering questions about Burlington College’s finances are based, in large part, on a cryptic three-page spreadsheet.

The spreadsheet  — a list of confirmed and potential donors to the college’s 2010 capital campaign using each donor’s initials — helped Burlington College and then-president Jane O’Meara Sanders to finance the purchase of a new $10 million lakefront campus.

At least four of the donors included on the spreadsheet, however, have challenged the listed amount of their donations. The document now appears to be wrapped up in an ongoing FBI investigation about whether the donations were exaggerated to mislead the bank.

One former member of Burlington College’s board of trustees, David V. Dunn, said the board began to doubt the veracity of some of the capital campaign donations in the summer of 2011, and he says the doubts led to the removal of Sanders as president that fall. Dunn said the college’s finance office indicated that actual donations were less than what was originally represented.

A second former trustee, Jonathan Leopold, denied the account and said the board had no doubts about the approximately $2.6 million in listed capital campaign pledges. Leopold said the board was more concerned that additional fundraising efforts had stalled.

The college needed to raise $6 million to support the debt from the $10 million property purchase. College leaders also planned to renovate the spacious new campus, which would attract new students and their tuition dollars. The plan was to double enrollment.

An FBI investigation into Bernie and Jane Sanders that began in 2016 finally warranted a response from the wife of the former Democrat presidential candidate, which was: “I find it incredibly sexist.”

How creative . . .

The investigation into the Sanders continues to rage on after a year and a half and yet Jane Sanders only found this all to be “incredibly sexist”?

In a Boston Globe article on the story, Sanders’ take on the investigation comes off as follows:

The story is convoluted, but one thing is clear: Jane Sanders has had enough of Toensing and his tactics. “I find it incredibly sexist that basically he’s going after my husband by destroying my reputation, and that’s not OK,” she said in her first interview about the man responsible for an FBI probe that centers on her leadership at Burlington College, a small liberal arts school on Lake Champlain that she led from 2004 to 2011. The college closed last year as it struggled to pay its creditors and lost its accreditation.

The severity of the situation, which Jane Sanders seems to not grasp, leaks into Sen. Bernie Sanders’ political career and the implications are massive and far reaching.

NPR reports:

Jane Sanders is one of her husband’s closest political advisers. On the campaign trail last year, she took the stage with him regularly, from rallies in rural Iowa to his victory speech after the New Hampshire primary. In hotels on the campaign trail, she could be seen in the lobby working with campaign staff.

Things are not looking good for the Sanders camp at the moment, and Bernie’s liberal persona continues to unravel.

 

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