Bernie and Jane Sanders College corruption? Funneled daughter $500,000

Earlier I posted  Will Trump end up causing the downfall of Bernie and Jane Sanders?

The tasty part is it will be the Donald who may play an important part in the outcome. He has yet to appoint the U.S. Attorney for Vermont who will be deciding how to proceed.

Matrix, a stalwart reader sent this additional gem to add to this shiny object. Not only does it look like Bernie and Jane were involved in a fraudulent land deal, the daughter was raking in the dough as well, not to the benefit of Burlington College:

How did Jane Sanders funnel more than 500k to her daughter’s for-profit woodworking business during her tenure as President of Burlington College and get away with it?

What hasn’t been discussed in all the noise about Burlington College’s closure is how Jane Sanders (supported by the same Board of Trustees who approved the land sale) openly funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars from Burlington College’s operating funds to VT Woodworking School — a for-profit business started by her daughter Carina Driscoll in 2007.

Despite scattered reporting on this story, Jane Sanders has never been asked to explain why Burlington College suddenly needed to start a woodworking program in 2009 – the very same year the VT Woodworking School expanded to its current site in Fairfax, VT taking on considerable expense of a new building and needing to find students to fill its cavernous 15,000 square-foot space. Nor has anyone asked if the College did what would normally be required in this process by creating a Request For Proposal (RFP) to solicit bids in order to guarantee that the process was fair and open to other entities competing for this business.

This appears not to be the case given that the College was also funding another program at the same time (as reported in the College’s tax returns) that directly benefited the children of Jonathan Leopold, a board member.

According to the College’s now defunct website, Carina Driscoll was listed as Director of the Woodworking Program at Burlington College on the Faculty and Staff Directory in 2016. It is unclear how the College was able to hire her on staff while she remained the owner of VT Woodworking — directly benefitting from the College’s funding of her for-profit business.  Read more