Sen. Bernie Sanders on Tuesday slammed a federal investigation into his wife regarding a $10 million loan to a defunct college in Vermont, blaming it on a surrogate of President Donald Trump.
"My wife is about the most honest person I know," an obviously irked Sanders told Erin Burnett on CNN of his wife, Jane.
"When she came to that college, it was failing financially and academically. When she left it, it was in better shape," the Vermont independent said.
"Five years later, just at the moment —​ coincidentally, no doubt —​ when I am a candidate for president of the United States, Donald Trump's campaign manager, vice chairman of the Republican Party in Vermont, launched this investigation," said Sanders.
"It is a sad state of affairs in America, not only when we have politicians being destroyed, publicly, with their attacks against elected officials.
"When you go after your wife, people's wives, that is pretty pathetic," Sanders said. "That's where we are right now."
Bernie and Jane Sanders each hired lawyers in the Justice Department probe that Sanders might have used his political influence to help his wife obtain the loan for Burlington College, according to Politico.
Jane Sanders helmed the college from 2004 to 2011 —​ and the institution closed in May 2016 after failing accreditation requirements and bankruptcy.
The investigation arose from a January 2016 complaint alleging Jane Sanders commingled donor numbers on a 2010 loan application for the college, according to the report.
Brady Toensing, a state chairman for the Trump campaign, filed the complaint to the U.S. attorney for Vermont.
He told Politico on Saturday that "the investigation was started more than a year ago under President [Barack] Obama, his Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and his United States attorney, all of whom are Democrats."
When Burnett on Tuesday asked Sanders whether his wife was under FBI investigation for the loan, the senator angrily responded: "That's all I want to say, and we'll let it play out.
"But I think it's pathetic that when people are involved in public life, it's not only they who get attacked, but it is their wives and their families that get attacked," he added. "That's what this is about."
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