Trump attorneys seek to bar his campaign comments at trial
SAN DIEGO — In an unusual legal manoeuvr, Donald Trump’s attorneys have asked a federal judge to exclude any statements made by or about the Republican nominee during the presidential campaign from his upcoming civil trial over the now-defunct Trump University.
The legal request, filed late Thursday in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California in San Diego, would apply to Trump’s tweets, a video of Trump making sexually predatory comments about women, his tax history, revelations about his private charitable foundation and public criticisms about the judge in the case.
Trump’s lead attorney, Daniel Petrocelli, said the evidence would be irrelevant to the civil fraud case and may prejudice or inflame a jury, jeopardizing rights to a fair trial. He warned that allowing the jury to consider Trump’s own remarks “carries an immediate and irreparable danger of extreme and irremediable prejudice to defendants, confusion of issues and waste of time.”
A trial in the nearly 7-year-old class-action lawsuit is scheduled to begin Nov. 28. Petrocelli said prospective jurors will already have had an opportunity to vote in the presidential election by then. “It is in the jury box where they must judge him and this case only on evidence and argument relevant to the issues at hand,” he wrote.