[B]URLINGTON — The federal probe into a 2010 land deal orchestrated by former Burlington College president Jane Sanders, wife of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., is ongoing, a news report suggests.
Sanders was forced out as president of Burlington College the following year, but she has vehemently denied any impropriety in how she conducted the $10 million purchase of a 33-acre lakefront property.
The college borrowed heavily to finance the transaction, which relied on pledged donations and projections of increased enrollment. Several donors have said their pledges were overstated or misrepresented in the loan agreement, and the school was never able to increase its student count as expected.
Burlington College closed in May 2016 with its leadership citing debt from the land deal as the proximate cause.
Fox News reported early Friday that former Burlington College Board Chair Yves Bradley says the federal investigation is ongoing. “He said he was visited by FBI agents in the last six weeks and was questioned about Sanders’ involvement in the alleged bank fraud,” according to the report.
Bradley did not return multiple phone calls and messages from VTDigger Friday morning seeking comment. The real estate agent had previously said his only contact with the FBI or the U.S. Attorney for Vermont came through an attorney for the now defunct college and that he had not personally been interviewed in the probe.
If agents interviewed Bradley recently, it would suggest the investigation is still ongoing. An FBI spokeswoman said the agency’s policy is not to confirm or deny the existence of an investigation. The U.S. Attorney’s office, which would be the prosecuting office seeking an indictment in the case, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Fox News also interviewed Coralee Holm, the former Burlington College dean of operations, who coordinated the school’s response to an FBI subpoena in 2016.
The Fox News report states that Holm said, “If there is going to be something that happened it would be the grand jury … it would be brought in front of the grand jury … they already told me to be … that was a potential but they did tell me that wasn’t an absolute.”
As the Fox News report notes, Holm has not spoken with an FBI agent about the investigation since the summer. In an interview Friday morning, Holm told VTDigger that the agent actually conveyed the information reported by Fox News in earlier conversations from the spring and fall of 2016 when she was providing records in response to the subpoena.
Holm said that, at that time, she had asked the agent if she would be called to testify, and that it was then that the agent told her it would be possible, given her role with the college, that she could be called to testify before a grand jury.
“They had told me that when the college was closing and right after. This wasn’t new news from the summer. They said if they decide to go forward I could be called,” Holm said.
The FBI launched its probe into Burlington College’s purchase of the diocese land in 2016 after Vermont GOP Vice Chair Brady Toensing requested an investigation based on reporting by VTDigger.
Burlington College borrowed $6.7 million from People’s United Bank through a public financing agency, and the diocese loaned the school another $3.6 million to make the purchase possible.
In the 2010 loan agreement with People’s, which is signed by Sanders, the college states that it had $2.7 million in confirmed pledges. Donors ultimately only made $676,000 in pledges, according to figures from former school officials.
In 2015, VTDigger reported that Sanders overstated pledged donations in the loan document. Two donors listed in the document told VTDigger at that time that their listed pledges were greater than what their personal financial records showed they gave. The two were listed as relatively small pledges, but one told Seven Days he was interviewed by the FBI at his Florida home earlier this year.
After breaking the news that the FBI was investigating, VTDigger interviewed the largest confirmed donor listed in the loan document, who disputed the manner in which her pledge was represented by Sanders in the loan agreement.
Corinne Bove Maietta, a member of the famed Burlington Bove’s Restaurant family, said she agreed to give the college an unspecified amount upon her death. Documents show, however, that Sanders put her down for a series of cash payments totaling $1 million.
Maietta said she also never signed a formal pledge agreement with the college, something that a former vice president for fundraising who was hired by Sanders to manage the capital campaign disputes.
Last June, Jane and Bernie Sanders hired a D.C.-based attorney and a local Burlington attorney to help the couple navigate the federal probe. Their Burlington attorney, Rich Cassidy, did not respond to a request for comment Friday morning.
Jane Sanders’ daughter, Carina Driscoll, is running for mayor of Burlington, an office her stepfather held in the 1980s. Driscoll runs the Vermont Woodworking School, which was launched as a Burlington College program when her mother served as president.
