http://www.theplantain.com/p/politics/f ... universityFollowing widespread reports that Donald Trump broke federal tax laws to make a $25,000 campaign donation to Florida’s Attorney General Pam Bondi after her office declined to investigate Trump University for fraud, the Plantain received an anonymous tip that Pam Bondi’s history with the Presidential candidate and his now defunct University is much more extensive than previously acknowledged. We investigated and discovered that Ms. Bondi has known Donald Trump for well over decade and did not, as previously claimed, graduate from Stetson University College of Law (widely regarded as "The Yale Law School of Tampa"), but in fact received an honorary law degree from Trump University shortly after its founding in 2005.
Ms. Bondi reportedly met Donald Trump in 2002 while working as a sales clerk at a West Palm Beach Anthropologie. Mr. Trump met the future Attorney General during a second season taping of The Apprentice filmed at her work in which contestants were tasked with designing window displays to attract high-value, white targets into the store.
Sources report Mr. Trump took an immediate liking to the recently divorced and bosomy store clerk, who reciprocated and confided to the billionaire that she always wanted to be a lawyer. It was shortly after that Donald Trump contacted an acquaintance on Stetson University's board who agreed to admit Ms. Bondi to the University's law school. In a document made up by the Plantain, Mr. Trump wrote to the school's recruitment office that he considered Pam Bondi a “very bright and attractive young woman" who was "a Florida 7, but only a New York 3”, and someone who “would make a fine woman lawyer one day."
Since the start of her career, Ms. Bondi has asserted that she graduated from Stetson Law, but the school's Dean, Donald Dreyfuss, told The Plantain that Ms. Bondi was actually told to leave after only two years for attempting to bribe her ethics professor with promises that she would introduce him to Mr. Trump in exchange for a passing grade, a strategy that we have learned through uncovered e-mails was Mr. Trump’s idea.
Mr. Trump reportedly felt bad about Ms. Bondi’s expulsion and worked with advisers to set up a private university, partly as a way to make money off of “desperate ex-convicts and single parents,” but also to be able to gift Ms. Bondi a law degree as repayment for her “friendship and loyalty.” Over a decade later, Ms. Bondi, as Florida’s Attorney General, was apparently happy to repay her old friend and mentor by clearing the University she helped inspire of any wrongdoing, and Mr. Trump, in turn, was happy to help his protege with her re-election campaign.
The Plantain reached out to Ms. Bondi and Mr. Trump for a comment. In a joint statement, the pair denied the “highly false and inaccurate” story and accused this publication of “making things up as a pathetic way of making a poorly constructed point” about Mr. Trump's character and Ms. Bondi’s ethics. The statement also accused The Plantain of having a liberal bias for not also reporting that former President Bill Clinton received 17.6 million dollars from for-profit university Laureate International University. Finally, the note also clarified that Ms. Bondi met Mr. Trump while working a TJ Maxx HomeGoods, not an Antrhopologie.