The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Sanders loses some luster amid inquiry
Feds probe land deal involving wife, Vermont college.
WASHINGTON — A federal investigation into a longago land deal by Sen. Bernie Sanders’ wife is threatening to take some of the luster off the senator’s populist appeal, attaching the phrase “bank fraud” to the biography of a politician practically sainted on the left for his stands against “millionaires and billionaires.”
Sanders, a Vermont independent, is still riding high on popularity from his presidential campaign, delivering rousing speeches to cheering progressives in Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia.
But he has been shadowed by talk of a deepening investigation into his wife’s role in a 2010 land deal for a Vermont college that ultimately contributed to her ouster as its president. Jane Sanders has hired a lawyer to represent her as federal authorities look into the $10 million sale of about 33 acres of lakefront property by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Burlington to Burlington College. She was hoping to relocate and expand the institution.
The couple and many of their supporters maintain that the investigation is politically motivated and that it was set in motion by the Vermont state chairman for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, Brady Toensing, who filed a complaint with the local U.S. attorney’s office in January 2016 on behalf of the diocese’s parishioners.
But the facts in the case do not fit well with Bernie Sanders’ populist image. The charges revolve around a $6.5 million bank loan that was obtained with a promise college donors would quickly pay back at least $2.6 million of the debt. They did not, Jane Sanders was ousted as president, and the college went belly up.
The senator had already taken some grief last year for purchasing a $575,000 vacation home on Lake Champlain, to complement his house in Burlington and his row house on Capitol Hill.
Sanders fans and Democratic strategists agree that the investigation, no matter its outcome, could be used by operatives in both parties to undermine the senator. Rival Democrats could use the case to try to wrest the progressive mantle from Sanders, who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination yet refuses to join the Democratic Party.
“Just the fact that this is hanging over them could be used,” said Nina Turner, president of Our Revolution, a liberal organization formed by several people close to Sanders. “I would hope that voters would dig deeper, but sometimes people don’t. And they hear the word ‘FBI’ and it sends a shiver up and down people’s spines.”
Sanders remains one of the most popular political figures in the country. Even Democrats who might want to push him aside understand that tarnishing the integrity of one of their biggest draws could make it harder for liberals to win elections in 2018 and 2020.
A federal law enforcement official, who declined to be identified because the matter was still under investigation, confirmed that authorities have been looking into the land deal.
To finance the land purchase, the college borrowed from a bank and obtained additional financing from the diocese, according to David V. Dunn, a Burlington College trustee at the time. The college needed to demonstrate that it had the financial resources to pay the bank loan, which it did with Jane Sanders’ assurances that it would receive $2.6 million in donations and increase its enrollment, Dunn said.
“Neither of those were true,” he said.
Some of the pledges turned out to be overstated, and enrollment did not increase. Sanders was forced to resign in 2011. Financially strained, the college closed last year.