Donald Trump said ‘university’ was all about education. Actually, its goal was: ‘Sell, sell, sell!’

By Tom Hamburger, Rosalind S. Helderman and Dalton Bennett June 4 at 4:52 PM 


"My job was to sell, sell sell," former Trump University instructor, James Harris, explains the inner workings of the company, detailing high pressure sales tactics, and the battle for profit. (Dalton Bennett/The Washington Post)
When Donald Trump introduced his new university from the lobby of his famous tower, he declared that it would be unlike any of his other ventures.

Trump University would be a noble endeavor, he said, with an emphasis on education over profits. It was a way for him to give back, to share his expertise with the masses, to build a “legacy as an educator.”

He wouldn’t even keep all the money — if he happened to make a profit, he would turn the funds over to charity.

“If I had a choice of making lots of money or imparting lots of knowledge, I think I’d be as happy to impart knowledge as to make money,” Trump said at the inaugural news conference in the spring of 2005.

The launch of Trump University coincided with two auspicious developments for the real estate mogul: Through his then-year-old hit TV show “The Apprentice,” the billionaire was developing an image as America’s savviest boss, while the nation’s booming real estate market was giving hope to many who dreamed of striking it rich.

Ads touted Trump University as “the next best thing to being Trump’s apprentice.” Trump, who every week on TV singled out someone to be fired, pledged in a promotional video to “hand-pick” instructors. “Priceless information” would help attendees build wealth in the same real estate game that made Trump rich.

In the end, few if any of these statements would prove to be true.

Trump University was not a university. It was not even a school. Rather, it was a series of seminars held in hotel ballrooms across the country that promised attendees they could get rich quick but were mostly devoted to enriching the people who ran them.

Participants were enticed with local newspaper ads featuring images of Trump, then encouraged to write checks or charge tens of thousands of dollars on credit cards for multi-day learning sessions. Participants were considered “buyers,” as one internal document put it. According to the company’s former president, Trump did not personally pick the instructors. Many attendees were trained by people with little or no real estate expertise, customers and former employees have alleged in lawsuits against the company.

“I was told to do one thing,” said James Harris, a Trump University instructor whose sessions have been repeatedly cited in the litigation, in an interview with The Washington Post. “And that one thing was: . . . to show up to teach, train and motivate people to purchase the Trump University products and services and make sure everybody bought. That is it.”

A Trump spokesman said Harris’s comments “have no merit” and accused Harris of “looking for media attention to further his own agenda.”

All told, Trump University received about $40 million in revenue from more than 5,000 participants before it halted operations in 2010 amid lawsuits in New York and California alleging widespread fraud. The New York attorney general estimated Trump netted more than $5 million during the five years it was active. He has since acknowledged that he gave none of the profits to charity.

This account is based on a review of hundreds of pages of internal company records that have become public as a result of the lawsuits, as well as new interviews with former Trump University employees and customers.

Many of the company’s internal records, including several “playbooks” that advised employees on strategies for pressuring customers, were unsealed in court over the past week in response to a request by The Post.

Trump and his lawyers have vigorously disputed the allegations, predicting that they will win in court and reopen the business. They point to positive customer-satisfaction surveys that have been submitted in the lawsuits and suggest they have been unfairly targeted by trial lawyers and a politically motivated attorney general in New York.

“We continue to believe that people got substantial value and that people were overwhelmingly satisfied,” said Trump’s general counsel, Alan Garten. “We are not going to be stopping what we are doing. We are going to continue to zealously defend this case because, at the end of the day, we know we are not being tried by The Washington Post or by CNN — but in a courtroom by a jury.”

Garten acknowledged that Trump never gave away the profits to charity. He said it was always Trump’s intention but that the lawyers leading the class-action suits against the company “got a hold of this and . . . whatever profits existed sort of evaporated.” The unfulfilled promise was first reported last year by Time magazine.

In his defense, Trump has often cited the many positive reviews by former customers. A number of them submitted sworn statements in court explaining their positive experiences at Trump University.

Kissy and Mark Gordon, who own a residential development company in Virginia and jointly signed up for the most expensive program in 2008, said in an interview that they still use techniques they learned from the course today.

“Did we have an expectation that Trump was going to teach us? No,” Kissy Gordon said. “We have a building background and the economy changed, and we were looking for something in the same field to do something with it. So we were there to learn.”

Gregory Leishman, another former customer, recalled speaking to his assigned Trump University mentor on the phone weekly and touring potential properties for purchase with him in New Haven, Conn. “They gave me information I didn’t have otherwise,” he said. “You can probably get all that information from reading books. But Trump University was a crash course. You pay more, you get more.”

Nonetheless, the company has emerged as one of the most potent lines of attack against Trump’s campaign for president.

In the Republican primary, Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) cited it as a “fake university” and sought to use it to help build a case that Trump was a “con artist.”

In recent days, Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton and her campaign have picked up on that theme.

“Trump U is devastating because its a metaphor for his whole campaign: promising hardworking Americans a way to get ahead, but all based on lies,” tweeted press secretary Brian Fallon.

Trump also last week invited a torrent of criticism, including from legal scholars on the left and right, for accusing the judge presiding over the California suits, U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, of being biased because he is of Mexican descent. Trump has said that Curiel is “Mexican,” although the 62-year-old was born in Indiana, and that because Trump wants to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border the judge cannot properly do his job.

The focus on Trump University also reignited a controversy in Texas over the decision there by the state attorney general not to file a fraud case against the business. Newly disclosed documents reported by Texas media show that investigators had probed the company for seven months and recommended a lawsuit. The inquiry was shut down when Trump University closed up shop in the state.


Trump later gave $35,000 to the gubernatorial campaign of then-Attorney General Greg Abbott. A spokesman for Abbott, now the Republican governor of Texas, has said it’s “absurd” to suggest a connection between the case and the donation that came several years later and that Trump University was “forced out of Texas and consumers were protected.”

Garten also dismissed any connection between the Texas decision and Trump’s donation, saying investigators reviewed “a few complaints . . . and decided not to proceed.”

‘Sell, sell, sell’
The Trump University sales pitch began at free seminars, such as one hosted at a Holiday Inn just outside of Washington in 2009.

A placard outside the ballroom read, “Trump, think BIG.” Inside, aspiring real estate investors heard the theme song from “The Apprentice,” the O’Jays classic, “For the Love of Money.”

Then, a Trump University instructor took the microphone. “All right, you guys ready to be the next Trump real estate millionaire? Yes or No!?” he yelled, according to a Post account at the time.

The purpose of these free 90-minute introductions was not to turn attendees into millionaires, but rather to “set the hook” for future sales, according to employee playbooks.

The playbooks directed leaders of the free seminars to conclude introductory events by getting “in the sales mindset,” “ready to sell, sell, sell!”

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