Jane, Bernie Sanders FBI investigation: GOP’s Brady Toensing says taxpayers, Catholic Church, banks lost but Sanders not harmed

The vice chairman of the Vermont Republican Party told Fox News Wednesday night that the federal investigation into Sen. Bernie Sanders’ wife is “firmly based on facts and figures and analysis,” not hearsay.

The FBI is looking at allegations Jane Sanders fraudulently obtained a loan to purchase 33 acres of land for the expansion of Burlington College in 2010.

President Trump’s campaign chair in Vermont, Brady Toensing, spoke on “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” explaining the case against Jane Sanders, the Burlington College at the time and how Sanders sought a $6.5 million bank loan to buy the property from the Roman Catholic Diocese of Burlington.

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“In order to get those loans, she had to confirm guaranteed donations of $2.6 million,” Toensing alleged. “Of that $2.6 million, the school was only able to collect about 25 percent … and of the confirmed donations, three of the donors have come forward to say that the school overstated their pledge amounts.”

Sanders exited the position in 2011 and the college ceased operations this past May.

Over the weekend, Bernie Sanders dismissed the FBI probe as “something [the] Republican National Committee is very excited about.”

“My wife is perhaps the most honest person I know. She did a great job in Burlington College,” Sanders told CNN. “Sadly we are in a moment where parties not only attack public officials, they have to go after wives and children. You know, this is pathetic and that’s the way politics is in America today.”

Toensing said the allegations need to be looked at closely by the FBI.

“If you look at who was harmed by this whole financial debacle, the Catholic Church lost almost $2 million, the taxpayers of Vermont lost almost $150,000, the bank lost untold amounts of money and the school went bankrupt,” he said. “But [Jane and Bernie Sanders], they were not financially harmed.”

Politico notes some of the recent comments by Bernie, how they hired lawyers, stating that “The facts of the case are complicated. They are steeped in Vermont’s peculiar educational culture and the incestuous financial system in Burlington, Sanders’ hometown and political base, where some Sanders backers worry that with Trump’s Justice Department calling the shots, the facts—intricate as they are—may not determine the outcome.”

Here’s more from that article:

On January 10, 2016, in the midst of Sanders’ sudden stardom—just weeks before the votes in Iowa and New Hampshire—the U.S. attorney for Vermont was sent a “Request for an Investigation into Apparent Federal Bank Fraud.”

Backed by six exhibits and a dozen documents, the four-page letterdescribed how Jane Sanders had “orchestrated” the purchase of 33 acres along Lake Champlain in Burlington, Vermont’s largest city, where her husband had minted his populist political brand as mayor. The deal closed in 2010, when the senator’s wife was president of Burlington College, a tiny, obscure, nontraditional school that always seemed to be struggling for students and funds. The letter alleged that to secure a $10 million loan and execute her grand plan to expand the college, Jane Sanders had falsified and inflated nearly $2 million that she’d claimed donors had pledged to repay the loans.

Sanders had “successfully and intentionally engaged in a fraudulent scheme to actively conceal and misrepresent material facts from a federal financial institution,” the letter alleged. It pressed for a federal investigation into potential bank fraud.

Bernie and Jane Sanders shrugged off the charges.