On November 18, 2016, President-elect Donald Trump reached a $25 million settlement for three lawsuits over Trump University.  The settlement covered two class-action lawsuits from San Diego and one from the New York state attorney general in federal court of law.

The lawsuit alleges that Trump University, which ran from 2005 till 2010, deceived its students with aggressive sales tactics. Which were described in the 2010 Trump University Playbook, which can be viewed online.  His playbook, made public after court review, was designed to teach his employees how to convince people to enroll in the University. Within it, his employees were instructed to “sell, sell, sell.”

Trump promised a University of “hand-picked” businessmen to teach students courses in real estate, asset management, entrepreneurship, and wealth creation.  Yet, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s case alleged this was false promise.  Schniederman said, “not a single [instructor] was ‘handpicked’ by Donald Trump.”  In reality, some of Trump’s ‘appointed’ instructors had little real-estate experience and some had even gone bankrupt in business. Certainly not the cutting-edge businessman he promised.

The misleading market practices were designed to sell a variety of courses and seminars for up to $35 thousand each. However, the content of these seminars were overall very general and were not equivalent to learning his ‘redound’ “Trump way to invest” that he had boasted about when promoting Trump University.

Even more incriminating, Trump University was never accredited as a legitimate university or college by the State of New York.  As a result, it did not grant degrees, give college credits, or grade its students.  In 2011, the New York Attorney General office begun an inquiry into Trump University for illegal business practices, which resulted in a lawsuit filed in 2013.

The State of New York estimated that Trump University defrauded over six thousand students, for $40 million in total. Trump is alleged to have pocketed $5 million in personal profit.

On November 19, 2016, Trump tweeted, “I settled the Trump University lawsuit for a small fraction of the potential award because as President I have to focus on our country.” Followed by, “The ONLY bad thing about winning the Presidency is that I did not have the time to go through a long but winning trial on Trump [University]. Too bad!”

Yet, the statistics of his settlement tell a different story.  Trump settled for 62.5% of the total $40 million collected in the alleged scam and approximately five times the estimated $5 million he made in personal profit. Typically, extremely unusual for a Nuisance lawsuit, or a lawsuit lacking legal merit with slim to no chance of being won, to settle for almost two-thirds of the claim.  The large portion that Trump settled indicates that Trump held substantial liability in these lawsuits.

Trump’s $25 million settlement will go to refund around half the money lost by the six thousand costumers represented in the case.

Trump himself has said he settled this lawsuit because he doesn’t want any distractions, when he takes office in January 2017. However, it is pivotal to remember that there have been over 3,500 reported lawsuits filed against Trump for his proceedings.

It is almost astounding, that lawsuits are viewed as only a distraction, instead of a serious offense. As the Trump narrative continues we start viewing the many lawsuits filed against him as minor misdemeanor that are trivial distraction to Trump.  Trump’s many misconducts have become only a fading topic of discussion, as we the American public and media have continued to normalized his shady and illegal dealings.