Vermont GOP uses Sanders’ collusion logic to call him out over wife’s scandal

Gage Skidmore/Wikimedia Commons

U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders and his wife, Jane Sanders

By Evie Fordham

The Vermont GOP demanded Sunday that Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders release “all investigative material” related to the investigation of a land deal connected to his wife.

Sanders, a leading contender for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, has called for release of the “whole damn report.” Attorney General William Barr released a summary indicating that special counsel Robert Mueller found no evidence of Russian collusion by the Trump campaign.

“I call on you to apply this same standard of transparency to yourself. Under your proposed standard, surely you would agree that all investigative material related to the criminal bank fraud investigation involving you and your wife should be released,” Vermont GOP chairwoman Deborah Billado wrote in a letter to Sanders Sunday.

Brady Toensing

Vermont GOP Vice Chairman Brady Toensing

Vermont GOP vice chairman Brady Toensing took things a step further by suggesting Sanders had misused his office to help the college when his wife was president.

“The shame is that we’ll never find out the full story, there will be no special prosecutor report and Sen. Sanders refuses to answer questions about pressure his office put on the bank to issue this fraudulent loan,” Toensing told The Daily Caller News Foundation over the phone Tuesday.

Sanders has denied the allegations and tried to minimize them by pointing out that Toensing was involved with the Trump campaign, reported The Burlington Free Press.

Sanders’ wife Jane O’Meara Sanders was accused of bank fraud by Toensing related to a 2010 land deal she made as the president of the now-defunct Burlington College in Vermont. The senator has dodged questions on the issue for years, whether talking to MSNBC’s Chris Hayes or setting up an interview with local media. Sanders’ then-spokesman Jeff Weaver said in November 2018 that the federal investigation had been dropped.

Weaver issued the following statement according to Vermont Public Radio:

Jane Sanders has been informed that the U.S. Attorney in Vermont has closed its investigation of the Burlington College land deal and has decided not to bring charges of any kind.

Jane is grateful that the investigation has come to an end. As she has said from the beginning she has done nothing wrong and Jane is pleased that the matter has now come to a conclusion.

“Unlike President Trump, who was categorically and publicly exonerated by the investigation, you and your wife received no exoneration, public or otherwise,” Billado’s letter continued. “Indeed, the only evidence that there was even a declination of prosecution is a statement by your paid spokesman saying so. Therefore, we also call on you to reveal any documentation evidencing a declination to bring criminal charges and all correspondence between your lawyers and the investigating authorities.”

The controversy had to do with the tiny college’s $10 million purchase of a 32-acre property in 2010, reported The Burlington Free Press. Jane Sanders resigned citing “different visions for the future” from those of the college’s board ten months later in October 2011. She had been hired in 2004 to help turn the college around.

The property deal that brought down the college cited a list of donations that “included $2 million that never materialized,” according to The Burlington Free Press. The listed donations included $1 million over seven years from a woman named Corinne Bove Maietta, who later said she had not agreed to donate that amount. Instead, she said had given $100,000 and agreed to a bequest upon her death of an unspecified amount.

“You can’t borrow money on the future,” Maietta, 83 at the time, told VTDigger. “That doesn’t exist.”

Maietta said in 2017 that she had recently been interviewed by an investigator with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) about her donation to Burlington College.

TheDCNF reached out to Sanders’ office about the Vermont GOP’s letter but did not receive a response at the time of publication.

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Images courtesy of Gage Skidmore/Wikimedia Commons and Brady Toensing

9 thoughts on “Vermont GOP uses Sanders’ collusion logic to call him out over wife’s scandal

  1. It’s Power, Greed and Name recognition. If associated with a person of that stature, you can bankrupt a college and get severance money and it’s covered up.

    The Burn is a con artist, mentioning free stuff to the sheeple that he knows will listen and back him. I wonder if he’s paid off the U.S. Attorney in Vermont, “has closed its investigation of the Burlington College land deal and has decided not to bring charges of any kind.”

    Why is the Burn so disgusted with people making something of their lives in the Capitalistic System and attack them when he makes millions in his sheeple Socialistic environment? Great soap box rhetoric that he has mastered.

    While he’s constantly producing carbon always traveling for his political money making aspirations, Vt has been reduced to one Senator, a questionable one at that. His attitude is, screw VT, money is the game changer. Even bankrupt a business.

  2. In Vermont, with a near-zero, real-growth economy, carbon tax revenues would be used to create even more government programs for more social engineering purposes, to create beneficiaries who will vote for the program creators. It is a form of socialism. Here is what Putin has to say about socialism:
    Putin warned the Obama administration against further adoption of socialism, saying Russian history clearly proves it is a recipe for failure.
    “Any fourth grade history student knows socialism has failed in every country, at every time in history,” said Putin. “President Obama and his fellow Democrats are either idiots or deliberately trying to destroy their own economy.”
    Economists say Putin’s comments serve to illustrate how worldwide markets have made even economic adversaries dependent on each other’s financial stability.
    Various spokes people, including democrat-socialist Sanders, dismissed Putin’s claim, saying, “We’re going to do socialism better.”
    Now that is pure hutzpah.

    Sanders gets about 90 plus percent of his “campaign donations” from out of state.
    Millions of dollars that he does not need to get elected.
    Where does that money go?
    To his foundation?
    This all stinks to high heaven.
    Right here in Vermont.
    Are you feeling the burn?

    Ocasio-Cortez:
    “We can use the transition to 100 percent renewable energy as the vehicle to truly deliver and establish economic, social, and racial justice in the United States of America,” she said during a Dec. 5 panel discussion alongside Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt, another neo-Socialist who was married in the USSR and spent his honeymoon there.
    The cat is out of the bag.
    NOTE THE HIDDEN AGENDA.
    EVEN BERNIE IS NOT THAT BLUNT
    Dem/Prog/Socialist climate change fighting = MORE government programs for the undeserving, tax-consuming poor.
    Free electric vehicles for the poor
    Free deep energy retrofits of the housing of the poor
    Free heat pumps, solar systems and batteries for the poor
    http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/vermont-baseless-claims-about-cold-climate-heat-pumps-for
    Free highly insulated/highly sealed housing for the poor
    Free healthcare for the poor
    Free education for the poor
    Free energy for the poor

  3. Bernie figures if he shouts loud and often enough the folks will forget about the foibles of his wife.

  4. Burnee screams FREE Collage for all While his wife Kills Off an affordable Collage…
    I think it’s only fair that a new affordable collage be started with the ill gotten gains of
    the holdings of the Sandernestias. Sell off a couple of your dacha’s burnee, it’s for
    THE PEOPLE….

    The Lying commie can also kick in some of the 4 million salary he hasn’t
    earned representing Vters..

  5. The logic is sound, but why fight Bernie? We should have been doing this in the 80’s if we wanted to make a difference, his ship has sailed.

    We in Vermont will have no bearing if he get’s elected or not. We in Vermont have an all hands on deck emergency, we need to have all energy,, money and resources directed in focused effort to bring balance to our state.

  6. Anybody that has followed Socialist Sanders and his wife also knows that she couldn’t
    get a loan for a ” Dog House” never mind a $10 million dollar loan for a College unless
    ” The Bern ” used his political pull……. Oh yeah…..He’s pretty important just ask him

    Vermont’s legal system has been hiding the fact around this fiasco, out of sight out of mind!!

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