Judge unseals documents on Trump University

 

 

 

 

 Trump holds press conference to announce money he's raised for veterans

A federal judge has unsealed 381 pages of documents relating to Donald Trump's controversial Trump University for-profit real estate program, which became public Tuesday afternoon as part of a lawsuit seeking damages and accusing the company of fraud.

The documents amount to the "playbooks" used by the company in convincing prospective students to join the program, which promised real-estate training blessed by Trump himself. But it soon found itself embroiled in controversy, with a number of students claiming that they had been misled.
Trump's political adversaries have seized on the controversy surrounding his real estate classes, where some students who paid upwards of $35,000 dismissed the program as a fraud. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz lambasted Trump on the issue during the Republican primary, while Hillary Clinton has already begun to use the issue against the presumptive GOP nominee.
Trump University faced a handful of legal challenges, as well as scrutiny from the New York Department of Education, before it shut down in 2011.
But Trump has trumpeted his innocence, releasing reviews from students lauding the courses and arguing that he won't settle because he'll be vindicated in court.
Lawyers for the real-estate magnate turned likely GOP nominee had argued to keep the documents secret after a request by The Washington Post to turn the documents over to the public. But Judge Curiel swatted their arguments down on Friday, asserting that the defense had not met the bar to keep the documents out of the public eye.
He also added that Trump's station as the GOP frontrunner, as well as the fact that he's "placed the integrity of these court proceedings at issue" bolstered the argument to make the documents public.
Trump has launched a tirade against Judge Curiel in the days before the release of the documents. He chided the judge as a "hater" and "very hostile" on the stump on Friday and has implied that he's biased because he's "Mexican."
Curiel is of Hispanic heritage but was born in Indiana.
The release of the documents came hours after Trump held a press conference on his donations to veterans groups, where he chastised the media for criticizing him on the donations. A flurry of media reports noted discrepancies in the money promised by Trump and the money he actually sent to groups.
Source :The Hill