Donald Trump’s lawyers asked the judge to allow them to present evidence that many Trump University students submitted glowing reviews of the programs at the time. | AP Photo Trump University plaintiffs: Trump campaign trail comments fair game

Lawyers suing Donald Trump for fraud over his Trump University real-estate seminar program say his campaign trail statements — including some alleged whoppers — should be fair game at a civil trial set to start later this month.

Last week, Trump's attorneys asked that all his comments connected to his presidential campaign be off limits in the class-action lawsuit, along with all discussion of what his legal team euphemistically called “personal conduct accusations,” such as the highly publicized recording of the real estate mogul suggesting he could sexually accost women at his whim.


In a court filing late Tuesday, plaintiffs’ lawyers pressing a pair of lawsuits over Trump University offered no indication they intend to raise those incendiary allegations against Trump in front of a jury expected to hear the case in San Diego federal court.

But lawyers for those who claim they were ripped off by the Trump University program said Trump’s motion to block all mention of anything he or others said during the campaign sweeps too broadly and amounts to an effort to “rig” the trial in his favor.

“Donald Trump’s dizzying array of objectively false, contradictory, and self-defeating statements have left him so flummoxed he is demanding that the Court create a new category of immunity to protect him from himself,” the plaintiffs’ attorneys wrote. “As a key witness in a case about his deception of others, Trump’s representations, acts (or lack thereof), and credibility will be among the most important issues for the jury to determine. Trump wants to rig the deck by hiding from the jury his own words.”

Both sides expect to call Trump as a witness at the trial, set to open with jury selection on Nov. 28. The plaintiffs’ lawyers called Trump’s misstatements and reversals during the campaign “textbook impeachment evidence” that should be open for discussion when he testifies.

The class-action lawyers handling the suit insisted in their filing Tuesday that they’re not trying to score political points against Trump. “As they have demonstrated throughout this litigation, plaintiffs have no desire to politicize this case. ... On the other hand, Trump has repeatedly done so,” they wrote, alluding to the GOP candidate’s claims that U.S. District Court Judge Gonzalo Curiel is biased because of his ethnicity.

At another point, however, the plaintiffs’ lawyers cite PolitiFact’s decision to name Trump’s presidential campaign as the ’2015 Lie of the Year.” They even quote a “Saturday Night Live” skit that aired in October, in which Alec Baldwin, playing Trump, asserted that the system was “rigged” because journalists were “taking all of the things I say, and all of the things I do, and putting them on TV.”

One key issue in the suit is whether Trump University promoters lied when they said the instructors for the program were hand-picked by Trump. He has admitted that he did not know many of them. Lawyers for aggrieved students say they should be permitted to introduce Trump’s comments on that point, regardless of where or when he made them.

“Whether Trump admitted the falsity of his handpicked representation (which he did) while running for President or celebrating Cinco de Mayo, there is no basis in the law to exclude such an admission,” the plaintiffs’ attorneys wrote. “Trump’s motion asks the Court to create by fiat a broad new exception excluding even highly probative and otherwise admissible evidence so long as it relates to a presidential campaign. Such a blanket rule does not exist, conflicts with the [Federal Rules of Evidence] that do exist, and would prove manifestly unjust and unworkable.”

Trump’s legal team also submitted its own filings in the case late Tuesday, including one asserting the defense's right to ask witnesses in the case about their political affiliations. The plaintiffs’ lawyers had asked Curiel to bar any such questioning.

“Such issues may bear on witness credibility and bias, particularly in view of the unique circumstances of this case,” Trump lawyers Dan Petrocelli and David Kirman wrote.

Trump’s side also asked the judge to allow them to present evidence that many Trump University students, including some who have joined the lawsuits, submitted glowing reviews of the programs at the time. Lawyers for the students have urged that those prior statements be excluded from the trial, but Trump’s attorneys said that would be fundamentally unfair.

“Plaintiffs cannot have it both ways,” Kirman and Petrocelli wrote. “They may not say TU was a ‘sham’ and its information and materials ‘worthless’ and then disregard literally thousands of descriptions of assessments of the experience by the very people on whose behalf plaintiffs now profess to seek ‘justice.’”

Curiel has set a hearing on the pretrial motions for Nov. 10, two days after the election.