Jane Sanders, wife of failed presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is reportedly being investigated by the FBI.
Sanders allegedly falsified loan documents while serving as President of the now defunct Burlington College (for more on that story, see Mike’s post here).
Bankrupt and without accreditation, Burlington College closed in 2016.
The Hill reports:
Federal investigators are looking into allegations that Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vt.) wife, Jane Sanders, falsified loan documents while she served as the president of Burlington College, according to multiple reports.The small Vermont liberal arts school closed down in May 2016, after going bankrupt and failing to meet accreditation standards. The college began to face financial difficulties during Sanders’s tenure from 2004 to 2011, falling $10 million into debt when the school purchased a new campus in 2010. Sanders has been accused of falsifying the information on the loan documents in order to expand the college grounds. The VTdigger.org reported that some of the donors Sanders appealed to for help with loans are now in contact with the FBI and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).Sanders left her leadership role in 2011 for undisclosed reasons.She claimed the college could count on $2.6 million in donations to pay for the purchased land, according to a 2010 loan application. But she ultimately raised only a fourth of that, making $676,000 in donations over the next four years, putting the college into bankruptcy in May 2016.The numbers that donors say they pledged compared to what Sanders documented differ, according the report.
According to a statement given to the Daily Caller, the FBI has not yet contacted Sanders.
As The Hill notes, Sanders left Burlington College in 2011. Mike blogged previously:
When Jane Sanders was hired by Burlington College in 2004, the school was already facing financial problems but was able to maintain day to day operations for several years.Things began to change in 2010, when Jane Sanders led the school to a financial decision which would forever alter the school’s destiny.Under her leadership, Burlington College purchased a lakefront property from the Catholic Diocese of Burlington for $10 million dollars with the goal of expanding the school’s campus.The decision was considered risky at the time because the school made the purchase by going into debt….Sanders resigned in the fall of 2011 and left the school with a golden parachute of $200,000.Five years later the school still hadn’t recovered from its financial quagmire and few wanted to admit that the writing was on the wall. In the meantime, her husband had also become an unexpectedly successful contender for the 2016 Democratic nomination. Bernie’s popularity among college students and promises of free higher education threw a spotlight onto his wife’s record.
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