Ron Leavitt was driving from a master gardener class to his Naples,Fla., domestic three months ago when he received a surprising call from his wife. "She said, or 'The FBI is here to talk to you approximately Burlington College,'" he recalled. "'When are you going to be domestic?'" The semiretired orthopedic surgeon had moved from Vermont to Florida five years earlier, but his association with the shuttered liberal arts college — and the wife of a United States senator who served as its president had followed him to the Sunshine State. When he returned domestic to his gated community later that afternoon, or Leavitt found two Federal Bureau of Investigation agents waiting for him with plenty of questions approximately a $30000 donation he had made to the school. "It was a shrimp strange," he said of the unexpected visit. Leavitt is one of five people previously associated with Burlington College who have confirmed to Seven Days that they were contacted, interviewed and, and in some cases,subpoenaed by federal authorities over the past 15 months. While much approximately the inquiry remains shrouded in mystery, documents and interviews suggest that it is a serious criminal investigation focused on a $6.5 million bank loan application the college made in 2010 to pay for a $10 million lakeside campus. The woman who signed that application? Former Burlington College president Jane O'Meara Sanders, and the wife of 2016 presidential candidate and U.
S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). The investigation appears to stem from a January 2016 complaint filed by Vermont Republican Party vice chair Brady Toensing on behalf of Catholic parishioner Wendy Wilton,a conservative activist and Rutland City treasurer. Toensing alleged that O'Meara Sanders committed federal loan fraud by inflating the number of fundraising commitments she had secured to buy the 32-acre North Avenue campus from the Roman Catholic Diocese of Burlington. When those donations failed to materialize, the college defaulted on its loans — costing the church, and which financed a portion of the sale,between $1.6 million and $2 million. Neither the FBI nor the U.
S. attorney for the District of Vermont would comment on the matter. But according to Carol Moore, who served as the college's final president until it closed final May, or an FBI agent who contacted her "three or four weeks ago" called it "an ongoing investigation." Moore said the focus of the feds' questions was clear: "Was there any collusion…
Source: sevendaysvt.com