Washington: A judge is ordering release of Trump University internal documents in a class-action lawsuit against the now-defunct real estate school owned by presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.
The order by U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, which came on Friday in response to a request by The Washington Post, calls for the documents to be released by Thursday. The Post reported the order on its website on Saturday.
Trump University has been cited in anti-Trump political ads during the primary campaign as evidence that Trump doesn’t fulfill promises. Trump’s lawyers deny any wrongdoing in the case before Curiel as well as another class-action suit in San Diego and a $40 million lawsuit filed in 2013 by the state of New York alleging that more than 5,000 people had been defrauded.
The New York real estate mogul, for his part, has claimed that Curiel is a “hater of Donald Trump” and should be ashamed of how he has handled the case. Trump also has questioned whether Curiel, who is Hispanic, is biased against him. “I have a judge who is a hater of Donald Trump. His name is Gonzalo Curiel,” said Trump earlier this week at a rally. “He is not doing the right thing. And I figure, what the hell? Why not talk about it for two minutes?” He then went on to speak for 12 minutes on the subject
The lawsuit overseen by Curiel states that Trump University's nationwide seminars and classes were like infomercials and pressured students to buy more but didn’t deliver as promised in spite of students paying as much as $35,000 for seminars. Curiel has set a November 28 trial date.
