Rubio attacks Trump over scammy 'university,' but his own hands aren't exactly clean

One of Marco Rubio’s many new attacks against Donald Trump is over “Trump University,” an extremely expensive series of real estate seminars over which Trump is now being sued. Mind you, Trump University was shady as hell, but it’s still rich to see Marco Rubio having the nerve to make it a big campaign issue. In 2014, Rubio himself went to bat for a predatory for-profit college chain. 

Rubio wrote a letter to the Department of Education objecting to Corinthian Colleges losing its access to federal financial aid during a major investigation into Corinthian’s practices. Rubio felt that “the Department can and should demonstrate leniency as long as Corinthian Colleges, Inc. continues to expeditiously and earnestly cooperate by providing the documents requested.” Here’s what happened to Corinthian Colleges between when Rubio wrote that letter and the spring of 2015:

… the company shuttered its remaining 28 campuses, instantly displacing some 16,000 students just days after it was fined $30 million by the Department of Education for a scheme involving "confirmed cases of misrepresentation of job placement rates" for as many as 947 students. The decision to close shop came after years of federal and state investigations into the company. [...]

In February [2015], the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced $480 million in debt relief for students it deemed were "harmed by Corinthian's predatory lending scheme."

That’s an impressive record of harming students.

Rubio didn’t come up with the idea for Corinthian Colleges. He didn’t put his name on it or profit from it directly. But his support for Corinthian makes his attacks on Trump for a scammy educational model look a little less than 100 percent focused on the issues and a little more opportunistic. As if we were in any doubt to begin with.