NollywoodStarzTv: November 2016

Tuesday, November 22, 2016

TRANSPORTATION Tennessee bus driver charged in crash that left 6 dead, including 5 children Published November 22, 2016 FoxNews.com

US NEWS Americans who live near border say Trump's wall is unwelcome LOS EBANOS, Texas (AP) — All along the winding Rio Grande, the people who live in this bustling, fertile region where the U.S. border meets the Gulf of Mexico never quite understood how Donald Trump's great wall could ever be much more than campaign rhetoric.

(1 of 21) A young migrants girl from Central American newly released after processing by the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol is fitted shoes at the Sacred Heart Community Center in the Rio Grande Valley border city of McAllen, Texas, Sunday, Nov. 13, 2016.

November 22, 2016

Erecting a concrete barrier across the entire 1,954-mile frontier with Mexico, they know, collides head-on with multiple realities: the geology of the river valley, fierce local resistance and the immense cost.

An electronically fortified "virtual wall" with surveillance technology that includes night-and-day video cameras, tethered observation balloons and high-flying drones makes a lot more sense to people here. It's already in wide use and expanding.

If a 30- to 40-foot concrete wall is a panacea for illegal immigration, as Trump insisted during the campaign, the locals are not convinced. And few were surprised when the president-elect seemed to soften his position five days after the election, saying that the wall could include some fencing.

"The wall is not going to stop anyone," said Jorge Garcia, who expected to lose access to most of his 30-acre riverside ranch after the U.S. Border Fence Act was enacted a decade ago. Under the law, 652 miles of border barrier were built, mostly in Arizona. The 110 miles of fences and fortified levees that went up in Texas are not contiguous but broken lines, some as much as a mile and a half from the river.

Eight years after government surveyors marked Garcia's land, he and his wife, Aleida, are still waiting to see if the Border Patrol will splice their property. "This lets me know that whenever they want to build the wall, they can," said Aleida, holding up a tax bill that shows the nominally expropriated sliver of property.

If a fence or wall goes up, the couple will be paid $8,300. So far, the Garcias and the rest of the village of Los Ebanos have been spared because the erosion-prone clay soil is simply too unstable, she believes.

Geology conspires against wall-building up and down the Rio Grande Valley. So does a boundary water treaty with Mexico and endangered-species laws. Catwalks and tunnels had to be built into existing fences to accommodate endangered ocelots and jaguarundi, two species of wild cat.

The gaps in the border barrier include an entire flank of the River Bend golf club and resort in Brownsville. University of Texas-Rio Grande Valley political scientist Terence Garrett calls them "gaps of privilege" because many landowners were politically connected.

Other landowners fought the Border Patrol in court. "The wall might make mid-America feel safer, but for those of us that live on the border, it's not making us feel any safer when we know that people can go over it, around it, under it and through it," said Monica Weisberg-Stewart, security expert for the Texas Border Coalition, a consortium of regional leaders.

The coalition wants federal dollars to go instead to bolstering security at border crossings, where heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine are smuggled in. A poll conducted in Southwest border cities in May found 72 percent of residents opposed to building a wall. The Cronkite News-Univision-Dallas Morning News poll had a 2.6 percent error margin.

The wall is popular in distant cities "because you can see, feel and touch it. But politically it just doesn't make sense," said J.D. Salinas, the coalition's chairman. As commissioner of the border county of Hidalgo from 2007 to 2009, Salinas won public backing for 20 miles of border barrier by reinforcing an existing levee with concrete and topping it with a fence. In 2010, the project paid off. The levee held back flooding from Hurricane Alex. The cost was about $10 million a mile, though.

In the Nov. 8 election, only three Texas border counties — all sparsely populated — went for Trump. The rest are solidly Democratic, at odds with the Republicans who control most state capitals and have been demanding more border barriers.

Rural ranchers worried about drug traffickers and other criminals are less likely to benefit from border walls and fences than city-dwellers, said Adam Isacson, a security expert with the nonprofit advocacy group Washington Office on Latin America.

"What a wall ultimately does is slow a border crosser for 10 to 15 minutes," Isacson said. "In an urban area, that 15 minutes is crucial." Border patrol agents can arrive quickly. In rural areas, they may be an hour or more away.

The U.S. side of the border is quite safe, said Weisberg-Stewart. "We are not in a war zone." In fact, cross-border trade has been booming. In 2014, more than $246 billion worth of goods and 3.7 million trucks crossed the Texas-Mexico border, according to coalition figures.

Trump needs to remember that Mexico is the second-largest U.S. export market, said Rep. Filemon Vela, a Texas Democrat whose district includes most of the valley. Only Canada buys more American goods.

"There's no way in hell he's going to see his great wall," Vela said. The region bears the usual hallmarks of American prosperity: strip malls, well-maintained interstates, prosperous gated communities with hacienda-style McMansions. Cold-storage warehouses proliferate for northbound Mexican okra, avocados and tomatoes while other warehouses brim with southbound used clothing. Cotton, grapefruit and corn fields abound.

Much of the Mexican side of the border has been afflicted by drug cartel-related violence, but crime in the Rio Grande Valley, which is home to 1.3 million people, has been consistently lower than other Texas cities.

If lots of "bad hombres" are crossing the border, as Trump has claimed, they are mostly taking their lawbreaking elsewhere. Further, there's no record of anyone sneaking across the border to commit acts of terrorism.

The Border Patrol's buildup after 9-11 is one reason, argues David Aguilar, who was named to the agency's top job in 2004 by a fellow Texan, then-President George W. Bush, and is now a private consultant. Since then, the number of agents has climbed from 9,500 on the southwest border to 17,500 in 2015.

Meanwhile, the number of apprehensions along the border is down from a peak of 1.6 million in 2000 — when Aguilar said at least as many got away — to 409,000 in the year ended in September. Nearly half were caught in the Rio Grande Valley.

Many analysts believe the Great Recession was a bigger factor than Border Patrol enforcement in making the U.S. less attractive to Mexican migrants in particular. Since tower-mounted video surveillance cameras began going up in 1999 in the Brownsville area, illegal cross-border traffic in the area "dried up by 85 to 90 percent," said Johnny Meadors, the sector's assistant chief for technology. He said the traffic moved west, where there were no cameras.

Seventy-two more of the towers, which are 80 to 120 feet tall, are to be installed in the valley by 2021, and could include motion sensors and laser pointers, Meadors said. Since 2013, the Border Patrol has also had five blimp-like aerostats that float from 1,000 to 5,000 feet above the valley on tethers. High-flying Predator drones have patrolled vast areas of southwest borderlands since 2011. The agency also has underground sensors along the border. How many, Meadors wouldn't say.

All the gadgetry has been a bonanza for defense contractors. The government spent $450 million last fiscal year on border security fencing, infrastructure and technology. "If you had a sensible immigration policy, there would be no need for all this," said Garrett, the political scientist.

What Trump's policy will be remains a mystery. During the campaign, he said he would deport all the estimated 11 million immigrants living illegally in the United States. Days after the election, he appeared to back down somewhat, saying he would expel the criminals among them.

Whether fear of a Trump victory has anything to do with a recent spike in arrivals from violence-wracked Central America isn't clear. They account for more than half of Border Patrol apprehensions in the Rio Grande Valley, where many migrants turn themselves in at frontier bridges.

After processing, released migrants are given court dates in destination cities where relatives typically await. Others are sent to detention centers. An average of 350 migrants, some adults wearing ankle monitors, now arrive daily at the Sacred Heart parish community center in the border city of McAllen, up from 100 a day in August, said Gaby Lopez, a volunteer at the makeshift shelter that opened in June 2014.

New arrivals get a shower, a hot meal and can pick through donated clothing. Ingrid Guerra, 21, a Guatemalan who is eight months' pregnant and bound for Kansas, said she was fleeing an abusive relationship and didn't tell the father. The father of her other child, a 2-year-old who stayed behind with Guerra's mother, was killed in a drunken brawl, she said.

Sitting with her is Erika Machuca, a 19-year-old Salvadoran. Machuca, also eight months' pregnant, is bound for Dallas, where her husband lives. She says two of her brothers and three uncles were killed in El Salvador in violence she did not understand.

Both women said they merely want to earn a living and raise families in peace. "Back there," Guerra said of Guatemala, "they kill at the drop of a hat."

POLITICS NEWS Trump's pick for Justice Dept could influence immigration WASHINGTON (AP) — As a senator, Jeff Sessions became Congress' leading advocate not only for a cracking down on illegal immigration, but also for slowing all immigration, increasing mass deportations and scrutinizing more strictly those entering the U.S. As attorney general, he'd be well positioned to turn those ideas into reality.

(1 of 1) Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala. speaks to media at Trump Tower in New York. As a senator, Sessions became Congress’ leading advocate not only for a crackdown on illegal immigration, but for slowing all immigration, along with mass deportations and stricter scrutiny of those entering the U.S. As attorney general, he’d be well positioned to turn those ideas into reality.

November 22, 2016

Immigration laws are enforced by other agencies, but the Justice Department plays a crucial role in setting the policies and legal underpinnings that shape the system. And if Donald Trump sticks with his campaign promises, immigration will be a top priority for his administration.

As the nation's top law enforcement official, Sessions could execute maneuvers to limit which nationalities the U.S. would accept as refugees and to reverse a federal policy that protects young people from deportation.

"The president has the clear power to suspend immigration to protect America," Sessions said during the Republican convention when he was discussing the threat of terrorism and the need to scrutinize refugees more closely.

The fourth-term Republican from Alabama was the first senator to support Trump's candidacy, and he helped shape Trump's positions on immigration. Sessions favors limiting the number of refugees coming into the U.S. and turning away children who arrive at the border alone who are attempting to reunite with families living in the U.S.

The attorney general can direct federal prosecutors to boost the number of criminal cases brought against immigrants caught crossing the border; guide legal opinions to defend executive actions; prioritize hiring more judges for federal immigration courts; overturn key decisions made by a federal immigration appeals panel and challenge the legality of state immigration policies.

"The attorney general has a lot of power when it comes to immigration," said Stephen Yale-Loehr, a professor at Cornell law school. "He has a seat at the table when important decisions are being made."

One of the most important legal opinions on immigration that came out of the Justice Department in the past eight years defended the Obama administration's policy of formally shielding immigrants who arrive in the U.S. as children from being deported. This policy also gives those immigrants permission to work in the U.S.

Sessions and other GOP lawmakers have called this "backdoor amnesty." The Trump White House can rescind the policy that protects these young immigrants, and as attorney general, Sessions could provide legal guidance to defend Trump's actions, which would put more than 700,000 people at risk of being deported.

"Tweaks of the pen over there can have large implications across the country," said Victor Cerda, a former Justice Department immigration attorney who led the Immigration and Naturalization Service after the 9/11 attacks. The agency has since become part of the newly created Homeland Security Department.

The Justice Department's Office of Immigration Litigation, housed in the civil division, is the force behind fighting state immigration actions like Arizona's landmark immigration crackdown that required immigrants to carry identification and invited discrimination against Latinos. The Justice Department sued the state, along with immigration advocacy groups, and won.

Given Sessions' and Trump's positions on immigration, it's unlikely they'd use the department to fight such state laws. "The courts have always paid much greater attention when the United States is a party," said Bill Hing, a professor at the University of San Francisco law school and director of its immigration and deportation defense clinic.

Immigration advocates are preparing to go it alone. "Private organizations are going to have to rely on their own resources to pursue these kinds of cases," said Thomas Saenz, president and general counsel for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

The Justice Department also houses the immigration court system, which for years has been woefully understaffed and amassed a backlog of more than 500,000 pending cases. The parties in the case can wait years for a final ruling. The attorney general could ask Congress for a significant increase in funds to staff the courts and blast through the backlog.

The Board of Immigration Appeals, which is the last stop in the immigration court system to challenge a judge's ruling, is part of the Justice Department as well. The attorney general is responsible for appointing that 17-member board and can overturn a decision, which can then be challenged in federal court. The board's decisions have widespread ramifications and are applied by judges across the country, Cerda said.

And the attorney general can influence the grants the department issues annually for a range of state and local law enforcement programs. Sessions has criticized the government for not cutting funds to cities and jurisdictions that have refused to cooperate on enforcing immigration laws. As attorney general, Sessions could push such cuts.

"For 40 years, no president and no attorney general has given a high priority to enforcing our immigration laws," Sessions said in 2007. If confirmed by his peers in the Senate, he could change that.

Associated Press writer Eric Tucker contributed to this report.

NOVEMBER 22, 2016 Man Arrested in San Antonio Police Shooting A 31-year-old man was arrested on a capital murder charge in the Sunday shooting of a San Antonio, Texas police officer. Otis Tyrone McKane said he was...

POLITICS NEWS Deficit complicates marriage between Trump, GOP lawmakers WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump promises big tax cuts, a border wall and massive spending on infrastructure. That's a recipe for bigger deficits that conservative fiscally-minded Republicans have railed against during President Barack Obama's tenure.

(1 of 1) The U.S. Capitol dome is seen at sunset on Capitol Hill in Washington. President-elect Donald Trump promises big tax cuts, a border wall and massive spending on infrastructure. That’s a recipe for bigger deficits that fiscal conservative Republicans have railed against during President Barack Obama’s tenure. Trump’s agenda runs counter to years of promises by congressional Republicans to try to balance the federal budget.

November 22, 2016

Trump's agenda runs counter to years of promises by congressional Republicans to try to balance the federal budget. It's a marriage of conflicting priorities — on the budget at least — and that means that neither partner will get everything their own way.

Trump's tax cut, estimated to cost almost $5 trillion over 10 years, looks sure to be pared way back. Top lawmakers like House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady, R-Texas, and No. 3 Senate Republican John Thune of South Dakota say the GOP's tax plans shouldn't add to the deficit. That would mean tax rates couldn't be cut nearly as sharply as Trump wants.

"We know we're going to have to pay for this," said Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, the No. 2 Senate Republican. "The question is whether we do it now or whether we send it to our kids and grandkids and make them pay for it. So that's an important point that we need to achieve some consensus on."

On the spending side of the ledger, Trump's promises of a huge infrastructure plan are already running into difficulty with Republicans. "We are not going to vote for anything that increases the national debt," said Rep. Raul Labrador, R-Idaho. "Fiscal conservatives in the House are not going to support anything that is not paid for."

The flip side involves longstanding promises by Capitol Hill Republicans to balance the budget by repealing the Affordable Care Act, sharply cutting social programs like Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps and student loan subsidies. Trump promises to replace the so-called "Obamacare" and assured voters during the campaign that he wouldn't cut Social Security and Medicare — and he's on record as saying that 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney's choice of now-Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., "was the end of the campaign."

"I said, 'You've got to be kidding' — because he represented cutting entitlements, etc., etc. The only one that's not going to cut is me," Trump said at a February campaign stop. Major reforms require presidential leadership — and as a candidate Trump didn't show much interest in attacking the budget.

"It's clear that deficits and spending retrenchment and entitlement reform was not what this election was about," said Neil Bradley, a former top House GOP aide who is skeptical of the party's ability to deliver major spending cuts.

The deficit, said Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., "wasn't talked about in the campaign." The math is also daunting. The most recent House GOP budget plan, for instance, promised to balance the budget over a decade by cutting spending by $6.5 trillion — roughly 13 cents of every dollar spent — over the next 10 years. But their budget plans have kept Social Security, the Pentagon, veterans programs and interest payments immune from cuts, so they've doubled down on cuts to the Medicaid health program for the poor and disabled, along with cuts to domestic programs like education, farm subsidies, housing vouchers and scientific research.

Recently, however, the focus in Washington has been to reverse cuts to the Pentagon and domestic agencies imposed by a 2011 budget deal. Along the way, Obama and top Republicans sought modest cuts to the federal crop insurance program and the generous military pensions paid to veterans in their 40s and 50s — only to have to reverse course after bipartisan squealing from rank-and-file lawmakers.

Given the inability to preserve such tiny spending cuts in recent years, one couldn't be faulted for doubting whether lawmakers could stomach the far, far larger cuts demanded by Ryan's balanced budget plans.

One option for both spending and taxes is to enact a one-time tax break on overseas profits that multinational corporations "repatriate" back to the United States. That could produce $100 billion or so over 10 years by some estimates and the windfall is being eyed for both an infrastructure package and a tax reform bill.

"I think the American people will support spending when they get something concrete and tangible for our efforts," said Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss. "There is a feeling that there's enough money there to pay for a big infrastructure program to get the economy going again and pay for stuff and also use part of the repatriation as a way to finance tax reform."

US NEWS School bus driver charged in deadly Chattanooga crash CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. (AP) — The driver of a school bus that was filled with elementary students when it crashed in Chattanooga, killing at least five children, has been arrested and faces charges including vehicular homicide.

(1 of 7) In this photo provided by the Chattanooga Fire Department via Chattanooga Times Free Press, Chattanooga Fire Department personnel work the scene of a fatal elementary school bus crash in Chattanooga, Tenn., Monday, Nov. 21, 2016. In a news conference Monday, Assistant Chief Tracy Arnold said there were multiple fatalities in the crash. (Bruce Garner/Chattanooga Fire Department via Chattanooga Times Free Press via AP)

November 22, 2016

Calling the Monday afternoon crash "every public safety professional's worst nightmare," Chattanooga Police Chief Fred Fletcher told an overnight news conference that 24-year-old bus driver Johnthony Walker was charged with five counts of vehicular homicide. Walker was also charged with reckless driving and reckless endangerment.

Investigators were looking at speed "very, very strongly" as a factor in the crash, Fletcher said earlier. Police said overnight that five children were killed in the crash. Earlier in the day, Hamilton County District Attorney Neal Pinkston told news outlets the crash killed six. The Associated Press was not immediately able to reach officials early Tuesday to clarify the discrepancy.

Thirty-five students from kindergarten through fifth grade were on board when the bus flipped onto its side and wrapped around a tree. The bus was the only vehicle involved in the crash, but Fletcher said the scene was complicated and covered a significant area.

Bloodied Woodmore Elementary School students lay on stretchers, while others walked away dazed with their parents after the crash, local news outlets reported. More than 20 children went to hospitals for their injuries, according to Fletcher.

Emergency responders needed almost two hours to get all the children off the bus. Television cameras showed emergency vehicles still there late into the night, and the National Transportation Safety Board tweeted that a team would be heading to Chattanooga on Tuesday morning to investigate.

Television stations reported that people lined up to donate blood and some donors were asked to make appointments for Tuesday. Kirk Kelly, interim superintendent for Hamilton County schools, said classes would be held Tuesday with counselors available for students and staff.

Fletcher said the families of the children who died had been notified but police would not release their names because they were juveniles. "Our hearts go out, as well as the hearts of all these people behind me, to the families, the neighborhood, the school, for all the people involved in this, we assure you we are doing everything we can," Fletcher said.

At the state Capitol in Nashville, Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam called the crash "a tragic event" and offered assistance. "We're going to do everything we can to assist in any way," Haslam said. "It's a sad situation anytime there's a school bus with children involved, which there is in this case."

POLITICS NEWS Suspect in fatal police shooting upset over custody battle The suspect arrested in the ambush shooting of a San Antonio police detective said he was angry about a child-custody battle and "lashed out at somebody who didn't deserve it." Otis Tyrone McKane was being led by police to the Bexar County Jail late Monday when he told reporters that he was angry with the court system for not letting him see his son and took it out on Detective Benjamin Marconi.

(1 of 11) San Antonio Police Department personnel investigate the scene after Det. Benjamin Marconi was fatally shot Sunday, Nov. 20, 2016, in San Antonio. Marconi was writing out a traffic ticket to a motorist when he was shot to death in his squad car Sunday outside police headquarters by another driver who pulled up from behind, authorities said. (Edward A. Ornelas/The San Antonio Express-News via AP)

November 22, 2016

"I've been through several custody battles, and I was upset at the situation I was in, and I lashed out at someone who didn't deserve it," McKane said. He said he wished to apologize to the family of the slain officer.

McKane, 31, of San Antonio, was arrested on a capital murder charge Monday afternoon in the fatal shooting of Marconi. The detective was shot as he sat in his squad car Sunday after making a traffic stop. Authorities have said a gunman walked up to Marconi's driver's-side window and fired.

It was one of several weekend attacks against law enforcement in multiple states. The San Antonio detective and officers shot in Missouri and Florida were conducting routine tasks Sunday when they became the targets of violence. Marconi was writing a traffic ticket.

"I think the uniform was the target and the first person that happened along was the first person that (the suspect) targeted," San Antonio Police Chief William McManus said. In Missouri, a St. Louis police sergeant was shot twice in the face Sunday evening while he sat in traffic in a marked police vehicle. He was released from a hospital Monday.

Law enforcement officials say there's been an alarming spike in ambush-style attacks. Sixty officers, including the San Antonio detective, were shot to death on the job this year, compared with 41 in all of 2015, according to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund. Of the 60 killed, 20 were purposely targeted by their assailant compared with eight last year, the group said.

Police officers also were shot and injured during traffic stops in Sanibel, Florida, and Gladstone, Missouri, on Sunday night, but authorities have not suggested those were targeted attacks. All the shootings come less than five months after a black military veteran killed five white officers at a protest in Dallas — the deadliest day for American law enforcement since Sept. 11, 2001.

Race was a factor in the Dallas attack, but police have not said if race played a part in any of the attacks on Sunday. In San Antonio, the suspect is black and the officer was white. In St. Louis, the suspect was black, but police have not released the officer's race. Most killings of police officers are carried out by white men, and most people shot and killed by police are white, said Craig W. Floyd, president of the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund.

Chief McManus said McKane was arrested on a capital murder warrant without incident after the car he was riding in was stopped Monday afternoon on an interstate. McManus said earlier that he doesn't believe the suspect has any relationship to the motorist who was pulled over initially.

Surveillance video shows the suspect at San Antonio police headquarters about four hours before the 50-year-old Marconi, a 20-year veteran of the force, was shot. The suspect asked a desk clerk a question but left before receiving an answer, said McManus, who declined to say what the man asked.

"I don't know why he was in headquarters. We have some ideas," he said. St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson declined to name the 46-year-old officer who was shot and wounded there. He said the officer is a married father of three and has been with the department for about 20 years.

"This officer was driving down the road and was ambushed by an individual who pointed a gun at him from inside of his car and shot out the police officer's window," Dotson said. The suspect, 19-year-old George P. Bush III, was wanted for questioning in recent violent crimes that included several robberies, a carjacking and perhaps a killing, Dotson said without elaborating.

"We believe he knew he was good for those crimes and that we were looking for him," Dotson said. "That's why he aggressively attacked a police officer." Police said Bush was later killed in a shootout with officers.

At least two other police officers were wounded in shootings in other cities Sunday, but it wasn't clear whether they were targeted attacks. An officer with the Gladstone, Missouri, police department near Kansas City was shot, and the suspect was shot and killed. The officer, whose name has not been released, is expected to recover.

Sanibel, Florida, officer Jarred Ciccone was shot in the shoulder during a traffic stop and released after being treated for his injuries. Authorities said they arrested Jon Webster Hay, 49, about 90 minutes after the shooting. They said he was booked into jail on an attempted murder charge Monday once he was released from a hospital, where he was treated after being wounded during a standoff and shootout with officers.

On July 7, Micah Johnson shot and killed five law enforcement officers who had been working to keep the peace at a protest in downtown Dallas over the fatal police shootings of black men in Minnesota and Louisiana. Ten days after that attack, a man wearing a ski mask and armed with two rifles and a pistol killed three officers near a gas station and convenience store in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. And earlier this month, two Des Moines, Iowa-area police officers were fatally shot in separate ambush-style attacks while sitting in their patrol cars.

"It's always difficult, especially in this day and age, where police are being targeted across the country," McManus said.

Salter reported from St. Louis and Warren from Dallas. Jamie Stengle and Terry Wallace in Dallas and Tammy Webber in Chicago also contributed.

Saturday, November 19, 2016

President-elect tweets he could have won Trump University trial by Jordan Valinsky @CNNMoney November 19, 2016: 11:09 AM E

President-elect Donald Trump sent two tweets on Saturday to claim he would have won the lawsuits against Trump University he has agreed to settle for $25 million.

"The only BAD thing about winning the presidency" is he doesn't have time to sit for a trial he says he would have won, he tweeted. "Too bad!"

Trump also said the $25 million settlement was much less than his potential financial exposure in the cases, which alleged Trump defrauded people who enrolled in real estate seminars he started in 2005.

"I settled the Trump University lawsuit for a small fraction of the potential award because as President I have to focus on our country," he tweeted.

On Friday, Trump settled three lawsuits against Trump University. He was set to testify in San Diego later this month, although his lawyers had asked the court to postpone the trial so Trump could prepare for the presidency.

Roughly 6,000 students are covered in the settlement and will receive at least half of their money back, a plaintiff's attorney said.

Trump's reaction on Twitter followed a statement from his Trump Organization: "We are pleased to announce the complete resolution of all litigation involving Trump University."

On Friday night, Trump had tweeted that he would be "working all weekend" assembling his transition team and cabinet. He also took some time on Saturday to denounce the cast of Broadway's 'Hamilton' on Twitter, too.

Trump University was a for-profit real estate seminar business that lured students with the promise of reaching Trump's riches. It was plagued with lawsuits and eventually shuttered in 2010.

It promised to teach students investing techniques they could use to get rich on real estate, just like Trump.

It advertised that instructors were hand-picked by Trump himself, but former students claimed that wasn't true. In fact, Trump has suggested under oath that he was not very involved in hiring instructors, despite what the promotional materials suggested.

Some students ended up paying tens of thousands of dollars. While the initial Trump University seminar was free, teachers would then upsell them for another program.

-- CNNMoney's Katie Lobosco and Jeanne Sahadi contributed to this report.

CNNMoney (New York)

First published November 19, 2016: 10:11 AM ET

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