WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — In 2013, Trump filed "a strong, 200-page-plus" complaint with New York’s Joint Commission on Public Ethics against Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, said Robert Waters, an assistant history professor at Ohio Northern University.
In 2011, Schneiderman had sued Trump over his for-profit education company. Although Trump University is now out of business, the lawsuit remains to be adjudicated.
During the lawsuit’s five-year history, however, Trump won a battle against Schneiderman by forcing the ethics commission to disclose whether it had formally investigated the accusations in his complaint.
In Waters’ view, Schneiderman is "a famously grandstanding politician who jumps on any issue when he thinks there's something in it for him."
The professor pointed to Schneiderman’s leadership of attorneys general from politically liberal US states in subpoenaing the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute for research and communications tied to global warming and oil giant ExxonMobil.
"With his record in mind, it is clear the chances are very good that Schneiderman would be acting in Hillary Clinton’s interest," Waters asserted. "If she is elected president, it is easy to imagine him receiving a high appointment in the Justice Department."
"It is laughable that Schneiderman announces an investigation of a handful of penny-ante charges against the Trump Foundation while continuing to ignore the hundreds of millions of dollars in paying for playing going on at the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation," he concluded.
Ralph Winnie, an alternate delegate at this summer’s Republican National Convention, concurred that Schneiderman’s inquiry seems diversionary.
"What [Clinton] is trying to do is to make sure that people dislike Trump more than they dislike her," Winnie said. "She has very high negatives… and wants to turn the attention away from herself and from the activities of the Clinton Foundation on to Trump."
"It will be imperative for Trump to have good lawyers to advocate that the donations he made through the Trump Foundation are ethical and admirable. If not, he will pay a price," he said.
Also this week, Democratic members of the US House of Representatives called for a federal Department of Justice investigation of the Trump Foundation.
