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This is a hit piece. If you start researching the people who we are supposed to believe Trump has injured, defrauded, threatened it all starts to fall apart. The Coking story is beautifully debunked in Post 49

The Trump University tempest in a teapot is given a very inflammatory spin. It was real estate seminars. People knew exactly what they were getting, how many sessions (in most cases 4), how many hours etc. I have linked a story that was from a liberal source, that hated to admit that they had found individuals who said the seminars were very valuable, they had recouped the money spend quite quickly and that the whole thing was a way for people to get their money back.

"It gave me the guidelines and knowledge to enter real-estate investment, and it was helpful for me," says Jorge Carlos Guillen, a realtor in Virginia and Maryland. "For me, it was not a scam. I paid $10,000 for it, and I got that money back pretty quickly."

Mark Gordon, owner of MG Real Estate Solutions and Mark Gordon Properties Inc., says he paid for the whole $34,995 class and was satisfied: "Helpful would be an understatement." "You pay your money and take your chances, and you'd better go into these kinds of things with your eyes wide open," Gordon says. "I don't think [Trump is] a scam artist, and I don't have a beef with this. Some people are very unhappy, and I get that: They spent a lot of money. [But] there was never any implied guarantee that you take their training and you're going to make millions. I never got that." Trump University

The prosecutor has a personal agenda in the Trump University case.

The Des Moines Register has a very different take on Vander Plaats

Marlene Rickets did more than threaten Trump that people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones, which is essentially what he said. She is secretly bankrolling the so-called “Super PAC” known as Our Principles PAC.

Since January, this Pac been running anti-Trump attack ads in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, with the sole purpose of getting anyone but Donald Trump at the top of the 2016 Republican ticket. The overwhelming majority of the money, $3-4 million, donated to the Super PAC has come from one donor, identified by the New York Times as Marlene Ricketts. A lot of the ads are misleading gotcha compilations of statements out of context and 10-15 years old.

I think Trump knows that having stepped into the arena by running he is fair game but there are limits. Attacking from anonymity, spending $3-4 million to attack Trump, often unfairly, IMHO gives Trump permission to say that turn about is fair play.

With the other candidates Trump did not attack them until they attacked him first. By making it personal, by dispensing slanted, incomplete and often frankly misleading ads to bring down a candidate Marlene Ricketts has stepped into the arena herself. She deserved to be called out and tied to her actions.