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Questions about the Trump University program have swirled around the GOP presidential hopeful recently, and seem certain to continue to do so. | Getty Trump fights summer trial in Trump University lawsuit

Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump is fighting efforts to hold a trial in a federal class-action lawsuit over his Trump University real-estate program either just before or after the Republican National Convention in July.

Such a trial has the potential to pull Trump off the campaign trail in order to serve as a witness. And in a filing late Friday night in federal court in San Diego, lawyers for Trump said plaintiffs' lawyers are intentionally trying to schedule the trial to interfere with his presidential campaign.

"Plaintiffs’ request to set a trial date in June or August of this year ... is a transparent attempt to prejudice defendants’ ability to defend this case at trial while Mr. Trump is running for President," renowned trial attorney Dan Petrocelli wrote. "It also conflicts with plaintiffs’ acknowledgment to this Court that it would be 'foolish' to think a fair jury could be selected in the middle of the current presidential campaign."

Questions about the Trump University program have swirled around the GOP presidential hopeful recently, and seem certain to continue to do so. The lawsuit already has been a distraction in the presidential race for the real-estate developer, with fellow GOP candidates using it to attack him as a "con man" on the trail and during nationally televised debates. Last week, Petrocelli said it "will be a zoo if it goes to trial" in August.

At a hearing last week, lawyers for alleged victims of the Trump University program suggested that, given the potential problems selecting a jury amid the presidential contest, some claims in the case could be heard first by the U.S. District Court Judge Gonzalo Curiel. But Trump's team dismissed that idea, saying it violates established law, would duplicate work and still produce the spectacle a jury trial would.

"Plaintiffs’ proposal also would require the Court to conduct a trial at a time when this case has become a politicized national story and while Mr. Trump is running for President. Not only would such a trial impose an extreme hardship on defendants, it would also invite a 'media circus' (as plaintiffs’ counsel called it ... and be exceptionally difficult for all parties involved," Petrocelli wrote in the new filing.

In a court filing Thursday, lawyers for the plaintiffs urged the judge to move forward with a trial in June or August in part because of the advanced age of some of those who paid as much as $35,000 for the Trump University seminars and a related mentorship program. That filing noted that Trump said in a recent deposition that he was "dying to go to court on this case."

At last week's hearing, Curiel appeared to be mulling a kind of compromise where he might grant a pending request by a lead plaintiff to withdraw from the case and grant Trump's lawyers additional time to respond to that development, potentially delaying a trial until after the November election. At that point, however, the judge might have to wrestle with calling a president-elect to the witness stand.

While Curiel raised the trial scheduling issue at last week's hearing, another hearing on that issue is set for May 6.

Trump also faces the potential for another trial this year in a similar state-court case over Trump University filed by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday. Trump could be called as a witness in that case, but no jury trial is expected.

The suits claim the Trump University program was deceptively marketed with claims that Trump hand-picked the instructors but that he did not. Some of the instructors also appeared to have had little experience in real-estate investing. Trump has said the vast majority of participants found the program valuable and some plaintiffs in the case gave the program stellar reviews at the time.