Trump demands yank of ad slamming his university

GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump on Monday afternoon called for the retraction of "misleading" ads about his now-closed real-estate investment school.

"Donald J. Trump is requesting the immediate retraction of the ads created by American Future Fund, which clearly was unlawfully coordinated with lightweight Senator Marco Rubio on these misleading commercials," according to a statement issued by the campaign. "The ads feature three individuals who are part of a lawsuit against Trump University, an educational program that has a 98% approval rating from all attendees. These individuals provided written praise of their experience in school surveys."

"The ads exposing Trump’s business dealings, in this case Trump University, are painful for him since the truth hurts," Stuart Roy, a spokesman for American Future Fund, said in an email. The American Future Fund is a non-profit group that has been active in this and previous presidential campaigns but does not disclose its donors.

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Trump University is the target of three lawsuits, including a $40 million civil lawsuit brought by New York's Democratic Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. Rubio has stepped up his criticism of Trump University in the last week as he seeks to get the upper hand in an increasingly ugly primary fight.

The ad in question features three former students who claim they were duped by the school. Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler reviewed the claims the students made in the ads and found they were consistent with signed affidavits of refund requests those students filed.

In a statement Monday, Trump called Schneiderman's pursuit of him politically motivated and described the litigation as "a minor civil case I have not settled out of principle."

Earlier Monday, Trump's campaign issued a retraction demand that targeted the wrong group, a pro-Rubio super PAC called Conservative Solutions PAC, as responsible for the ads. His campaign sent out a new statement several hours later focused on the correct group, but not before Rubio's allies had a chance to gloat.

"If the wall he promises is of the same quality as the legal work he gets from his lawyers," Conservative Solutions PAC's spokesman Jeff Sadosky said in an email, "it'll crumble in days, as his lawyers missed the fact that THESE AREN'T EVEN OUR ADS!"