As a recap, my previous reports established that Prosper, Inc. was an officially sanctioned “Key Partner” of Trump University (which allegedly “co-developed” its curriculum) and speculated that the Trump Campaign may have recently sent unsolicited e-mails. If it did, it wouldn’t be Donald Trump’s first run in with SPAM. According to eWeek, “Donald Trump” headlines sat atop the “most common spam message” on AOL in the year 2005. At the time, eWeek reported the messages were:
counterfeit e-mails offering a chance to work for The Donald
However, in at least one instance from 2005, a SPAM message
re-posted to Yahoo Groups that year appears to be linked to “Prosper Media” in Utah. The message bears the subject “Donald Trump Wants You, Please Respond”—almost the
exact same headline later called out by AOL as the most prolific SPAM headline of the year (number two involved a “Penis Patch”).
Evidence connecting "Prosper Media" to Prosper, Inc. can be found at Utah.gov. Utah
incorporation records list George B Brunt as the Registered Agent of Prosper Media, Inc.--which is listed as having resided at the same address listed in the SPAM message. George B Brunt is currently listed as being on the BYU Advisory Council, where his
bio reflects that he was the chief legal officer of Prosper. A Washington Post
story from 2008, identifies George Brunt as Prosper Inc.’s general counsel.
In
deposition testimony, Trump University president Michael Sexton was asked about the relationship between Trump University and Prosper:
Q. Was -- were the ads -- were the ads approved by you or somebody else at Trump University?
A. They were all supposed to be approved, but one of the reasons we -- I guess I would say one of the reasons that we had a bit of a tenuous relationship with them [Prosper, Inc.] was that we would find at times ads that came back to us from third parties that had no resemblance to what we had approved.
And from their standpoint – their defense was they only had control over so much. As soon as they let it out the door, Prosper -- as soon as Prosper contracted with a publisher, who then contracted with another publisher, an affiliate or a subaffiliate…
Despite Sexton’s characterization of the relationship as “tenuous”, and the (probably) unwanted attention shined on Trump University marketing by the 2005 AOL report (which appears to have been broadly reported on only a few short months after the Trump University launch event), Sexton states that the relationship lasted “two or three years, something like that. I'm not sure.”
(Author’s Note: This article was originally published on The-NewsHub.com and has been reproduced above in its entirety.)