New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman likened Donald Trump to vintage con artist Clark Stanley on Thursday, and claimed the billionaire has long used “false promises to prey on desperate people” much like Stanley, the “Rattlesnake King.”
“The allegations in my office’s case against Donald Trump and Trump University have me thinking back to the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago,” Schneiderman, who filed a $40 million lawsuit against Trump in 2013, wrote in an op-ed for the New York Daily News.
Schneiderman told the story of Stanley, who convinced fair-goers that a dead rattlesnake mixed with turpentine could cure “all pain and lameness.”
“Of course, the snake oil wasn’t a cure-all,” Schneiderman noted, adding that “using false promises to prey on desperate people has long been a hallmark of snake-oil salesmen.”
“A lawsuit by my office alleges that Donald Trump was basically doing the same thing with Trump University — swindling desperate people with phony promises,” he wrote.
Schneiderman’s class-action case against Trump is one of three currently making their way through the courts. Another case, originally filed by California resident and former Trump University student Tarla Makaeff, is being handled by U.S. District Court Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who Trump alleges is incapable of performing his job impartially because he’s of Mexican descent.
“That is absurd and offensive,” Schneiderman opined. “Nearly as absurd is the statement’s claim that Trump University offered a ‘substantive, valuable education.'”
Trump has also attacked Schneiderman, claiming the New York Democrat’s case against him is motivated by “pure politics.”
“He has called into question my office’s integrity and accused me of everything from accepting a bribe to personally conspiring with the president of the United States to take him down,” Schneiderman wrote Thursday.
He added, “[Trump] will attack prosecutors like me who attempt to hold him to account and jurists who rule against him. Yet my office will continue to pursue justice for New Yorkers and others scammed by Trump University, without fear or favor.”
In a statement released by his campaign on Tuesday, Trump blamed the media for reporting “one inaccuracy after another concerning the ongoing litigation” involving his now-defunct online college.
He later assured voters, “I do not intend to comment on this matter any further.”
