moodboard/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) — As President-elect Donald Trump flew to Washington, D.C., to meet with President Barack Obama Thursday, attorneys for the mogul-turned-politician are scheduled to be in court in California for a pre-trial hearing in a civil fraud case against Trump and the now-defunct Trump University.
The class-action case, one of three concerning the for-profit real estate training program, alleges that Trump University was little more than a moneymaking scheme in which students were “lured” in by Trump’s name and then, “instead of a complete real estate education, students merely received an ‘infomercial’ pushing additional seminars or workshops they were told they would need to take to succeed.” Students were allegedly “up-sold” and eventually encouraged to spend more than $35,000 on classes and materials in exchange for “guaranteed success.”
“Based upon my personal experience and employment, I believe that Trump University was a fraudulent scheme and that it preyed upon the elderly and uneducated to separate them from their money,” former Trump University sales manager Ronald Schnackenberg said in a deposition for another lawsuit against Trump, also filed in California. A third suit targeting the program was filed by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman in New York in August 2013.
In court papers, Trump has denied the allegations and said he will win the cases. Alan Garten, an attorney for the Trump Organization, previously told ABC News that he was “very confident that we provided a valuable education to students and that those who participated got their money’s worth.”
Thursday in California, Trump’s attorneys will be arguing over what kind of evidence will be allowed in court when the trial there begins on Nov. 28. Trump, who is a named defendant in all three cases, is expected to appear in court to defend the program, which ran from 2005 to 2011.
Both California cases are overseen by U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who Trump said during his presidential campaign has been “totally biased.” In June, Trump told The Wall Street Journal that Curiel’s Mexican heritage meant he had an “absolute conflict” in the case because of Trump’s aggressive stance on immigration and his proposal to “build a wall” separating the U.S. and Mexico. Curiel was born in Indiana to Mexican immigrant parents.
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