TRUMP YOU tells the stunning story of Donald Trump’s fake university and the decade-long fight to hold him accountable. Lead plaintiff Art Cohen, who sued Trump in federal court, recounts the emotional toll of being defrauded and his securing a $25 million settlement against the president-elect of the United States.
Art describes the optimism he initially felt after signing up for Trump University. But tens of thousands of dollars later, he realized it was all a scam – there were no secrets to be shared, only empty promises to enrich a con artist.
After filing his lawsuit against Donald Trump in 2013, Art Cohen was shocked to witness a secret hot-mic conversation between Trump and his attorney, and he recounts the inner turmoil that followed when Donald Trump used the presidential campaign trail to hurl sexist, demeaning insults at plaintiffs and racist attacks at the judge overseeing their case.
Within TRUMP YOU, Art Cohen describes stunning parallels connecting Trump University and Donald Trump’s illegitimate presidency. Art is one of the rare people who succeeded in holding Donald Trump accountable. His insights on Trump’s legal antics serve an important lesson for prosecutors now investigating Donald Trump for a smorgasbord of criminality.
TRUMP YOU tells the stunning story of Donald Trump’s fake university and the decade-long fight to hold him accountable. Lead plaintiff Art Cohen, who sued Trump in federal court, recounts the emotional toll of being defrauded and his securing a $25 million settlement against the president-elect of the United States.
Art describes the optimism he initially felt after signing up for Trump University. But tens of thousands of dollars later, he realized it was all a scam – there were no secrets to be shared, only empty promises to enrich a con artist.
After filing his lawsuit against Donald Trump in 2013, Art Cohen was shocked to witness a secret hot-mic conversation between Trump and his attorney, and he recounts the inner turmoil that followed when Donald Trump used the presidential campaign trail to hurl sexist, demeaning insults at plaintiffs and racist attacks at the judge overseeing their case.
Within TRUMP YOU, Art Cohen describes stunning parallels connecting Trump University and Donald Trump’s illegitimate presidency. Art is one of the rare people who succeeded in holding Donald Trump accountable. His insights on Trump’s legal antics serve an important lesson for prosecutors now investigating Donald Trump for a smorgasbord of criminality.
Trump University is no joke.
The for-profit education scam—which was operated out of hotel ballrooms—centered on business honcho and reality TV star, Donald Trump, who promised to share his real estate secrets. As it turned out, Trump University wasn’t an actual university and didn’t feature much input from Trump besides promotional materials and snazzy videos preaching “success.”
Before it was shut down in 2010, TrumpU shattered the lives of thousands of student-victims.
Including mine.
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Yep, I got suckered out of a lot of money—I’m embarrassed to say how much—and ended up suing Trump personally in 2013, serving as lead plaintiff in one of two federal class-action lawsuits. At the time, Trump’s oft-teased political ambitions seemed like a pipe dream.
With the legal saga still ongoing two years later, Trump decided to run for president, leaving me locked in a court battle against the potential leader of the free world. When the Trump University lawsuits threatened to derail his race for the White House, Trump defaulted to his corrupt impulses to pollute and undermine the rule of law, paving his illegitimate path to the presidency.
Trump vowed to never settle the cases: “I’m not a settler.” But weeks ahead of trial, Mr. Never-Settler, then the president-elect, ended up agreeing to a $25 million settlement, the most expensive legal defeat of his career.
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All these years later, TrumpU seems quaint—but in fact, it foreshadowed the devastation, bloodshed, and corruption that defined Trump’s presidency. He operated the federal government similarly to Trump University by stocking Washington with his “hand-picked experts,” misinforming the public with a flurry of lies, tricking unsuspecting people into losing everything, then spending years avoiding accountability for his criminal activity.
As lead plaintiff against Donald Trump, I witnessed a secret conversation in December 2015 between Trump and his attorney that reflected Trump’s corrupt intent, his impulse to do anything and attack whomever he believed was a roadblock. During that hot-mic conversation, Trump showed his tendency to speak in code. Directives were easy to miss to the untrained ear, but they represented subliminal calls to action to his supporters and enablers. His not-so-veiled language to a mob in Washington on January 6, 2021 incited an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Fueling the deadly uprising—a stain on our country’s democracy—reflected an extension of the tactics he used throughout the Trump University ordeal.
This memoir reveals never-before-shared details of the legal saga that come from private conversations, notes, and recollections. I’ve also obtained fresh interviews with some of the key people associated with the Trump University legal battle. Their quotes are interspersed throughout the book.
I aimed to present this material in an entertaining, thoughtful, and courageous manner. I strove to tell this story—the story that Donald Trump never wanted you to learn—as truthfully and unflinchingly as possible.
I wasn’t involved in national politics when I sued Donald Trump. I only hoped to right a wrong for thousands of scammed students and get our money back. I didn’t expect to find myself stuck in a battle of wills with the man who would become President of the United States.
As with so much in Donald Trump’s professional life, Trump University began with promises and lies—one giant con. . .
Trump You caught my attention first because I was teaching online for various universities when Trump started his ill-fated university. I remembered the buzz about the online school he was starting, but there's been little in any of the coverage from higher education publications that I might have expected. Cohen's book helps me understand why. This is a story of a university that never was--not even in terms of other for-profit schools that were big at the time like University of Phoenix.
Cohen starts the book mentioning how he felt embarrassed and ashamed that he fell for Trump's ploy; it's clear, though, that he now realizes that the entire country fell for it during the 2016 election. Even before Trump won the nomination, though, Cohen got to see behind the curtain. During a hot mic session during a deposition break, Cohen witnessed Trump saying things that showed his racist statements about Mexicans were not just mistakes or poor wording, for instance, and that he values no one but himself.
Part of what is amazing is that Cohen's story about his "enrollment" at Trump U, the subsequent lawsuit, and the aftermath is that mainstream media didn't jump on his story. He relates that even with a recording of the hot mic incident that major news outlets passed on the story. Similarly, he wound up independently publishing this book, as agents and publishers told him it wasn't a big enough story, that people were burned out on Trump, that it wouldn't sell.
Perhaps one of the best things about this book is the way Cohen draws parallels between Trump's behavior in relation to the lawsuit and Trump's behavior on the campaign trail, while in office, through both impeachments, and at the January 6 insurrection. In addition to an exhaustive summary of the case, the book includes a variety of notes linking to videos and articles that compliment the text and provide clear factual basis for his claims. The timeline at the end and the various photographs shared in the book are also a nice touch.
A solid read that sheds light on not only for-profit "education," the slowness of the class-action process, and on Donald Trump's behavioral patterns.