Over the weekend, news broke that Bernie and Jane Sanders had each hired defense attorneys as part of bank fraud investigation stemming from a $10 million loan that Jane applied for in order to buy land for Burlington College during her time as the school’s president shortly before the school closed because of debt and accreditation issues.
The news has been trumpeted as some sort of vindication for Hillary Clinton supporters as well as conservatives, but so far, Sanders himself has said little about the investigation that was originally brought to the FBI’s attention by Donald Trump’s Vermont campaign chairman Brady Toensing. “I don’t think it’ll be a distraction,” Sanders said between rallies organized against the Senate health-care bill last week.
Sanders was more animated Tuesday in an appearance on CNN’s “OutFront” saying the investigation is politically motivated (it started “coincidentally” in the middle of Sanders’ presidential campaign, five years after Jane Sanders left Burlington College) and “pathetic.”
“All that I will tell you now is it’s a sad state of affairs in America when not only we have politicians being destroyed,” Sanders said. “But when you go after people’s wives. That’s pretty pathetic.”
Host Erin Burnett ends the segment asking if Jane Sanders is under investigation, which Bernie does not answer (possibly under the advice of counsel), but that hasn’t stopped conservatives from suggesting that Sanders is stonewalling (the above YouTube clip titled “Bernie Sanders Won’t Answer Whether He Or His Wife Are Under FBI Investigation” comes from user GOP War Room) and that this story isn’t going away. Since Bernie is the boogeyman for a whole lot of people, one has to agree.
(via Washington Post & The Hill)