Donald Trump posted a
video on his YouTube page Monday calling out two of three people who appear in videos alleging they were cheated by his Trump University seminars.
"There's been so much talk by dishonest people about Trump University, or Trump Entrepreneur Initiative, and I thought I should set the record straight," Trump says in the video.
Trump University, since renamed Trump Entrepreneur Initiative and now no longer accepting customers, is the subject of a fraud suit by the New York attorney general's office and two class-action lawsuits by former clients.
In the video, Trump points to
two surveys filled out by two men in the ads, Bob Guillo and Kevin Scott, who give high ratings to the course. Trump had previously released the surveys online and called for the ads to be taken down.
"We have 98 percent of the people that took the courses where they have reports like this where they, for some reason, signed report cards at the end, which I think is a great idea and a great thing that they did," Trump says. "But when they are on the stand they will be showing and shown these reports."
Trump also cites a 98 percent approval rating by Trump University in the video and disputes a D-minus rating from the Better Business Bureau cited by Fox News debate moderators last week.
According to The Washington Post Fact Checker, the surveys Trump cites were filled out after an initial free seminar and were not anonymous.
Participants were encouraged to give positive reviews in hopes of receiving discounts on programs of certificates of completion, the Post reports. And at the free seminars they were sold on three-day seminars that cost $1,495. At those events, they were encouraged to sign up for mentorship programs that cost $35,000.
Meanwhile, the
BBB issued a statement on Tuesday saying the A-rating cited by Trump is inaccurate. The business currently has no rating, the BBB said, and it fluctuated between D-minus and A-plus before that.
The BBB also denied Trump's statement in the video that it faxed him a copy of an A-rating during Thursday's debate.
"Trump University has never been a BBB 'Accredited Business,'" the statement said. "The document handed to the debate moderators on Thursday night could not have been an actual 'Better Business Bureau accreditation notice' for this business."
A Huffington Post report on the video implied Trump was threatening the two men and woman who appear in the videos by giving the men's full names and saying they are looking for information by the woman, but the full names had already been reported by The Washington Post.