Fordham confirms Cohen testimony: Trump campaign threatened legal action if school released his reco

[jberryhill]

36. IMHO it is primarily due to a piece of rightwing folklore

There is a myth widely-believed on the right that Barack Obama went through some sort of extraordinary effort to conceal his academic records.

It ties into the birther thing. One of their idiotic beliefs is that Barack Obama received some sort of benefit from being enrolled as a "foreign student" in college, as if there was some sort of "foreign student benefit".

It's totally nuts, but Trump is a big believer in that bullshit and presumably directed Cohen to do what these morons think Obama did.

There may have also been items in the media suggesting Trump was less than a stellar student, and so they might have done some pre-emptive threatening just in case someone decided to leak something. People do that sort of thing. Look at, for example, the IRS investigator who was arrested and left twisting in the wind for giving Avenatti stuff that law enforcement already had.