Judge Gonzalo Curiel accused of ‘conflict of interest’ in fraud case, while report suggests Trump donated to officials who dropped action against the university

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

Donald Trump has stepped up his attack on the federal judge presiding over the Trump University fraud case, telling the Wall Street Journal that Gonzalo Curiel’s assignment to the case represents “an absolute conflict” because he is “of Mexican heritage”.

“I’m building a wall,” Trump said, of his proposed 2,000-mile barrier along the US-Mexico border with the stated goal of preventing undocumented immigrants from entering the country. “It’s an inherent conflict of interest.”



The presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s statements follow a speech in San Diego last week in which he lambasted Curiel as “a hater of Donald Trump” and “a total disgrace”.

“They ought to look into Judge Curiel,” Trump declared at the time, “because what Judge Curiel is doing is a total disgrace.” Trump also asserted that the Indiana-born Curiel “happens to be, we believe, Mexican, which is great”.

Curiel was born in Indiana, to parents who came from Mexico.

Soon after Trump’s comments to the Wall Street Journal were published, the candidate himself was implicated in questions of official impartiality on the Trump University case. A report from the Associated Press published on Thursday evening revealed that the presumptive Republican nominee donated tens of thousands of dollars to attorney generals who declined to pursue fraud charges against the now defunct organization.

Donald Trump's judge-bashing crosses a line | Scott Lemieux Read more

Trump donated $35,000 to the gubernatorial campaign of Greg Abbott, then Texas attorney general – a campaign that was ultimately successful – after Abbott’s office dropped a 2010 investigation into Trump University’s “possibly deceptive business practices”.

Florida’s attorney general, Pam Bondi, who endorsed Trump the day before the crucial primary in that state, reportedly declined to join New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman’s multi-state fraud suit against the organization after the Donald J Trump Foundation made a $25,000 contribution to a political action committee supporting her re-election campaign.

Trump is facing three class action lawsuits against Trump University over allegations of fraud. Trump denies all the charges and has vowed to fight them in court.

The notion that judges cannot rule on cases involving religious, racial or other minorities of which they are members is universally discredited in the American legal system.

The question was notably addressed in 1994, when Judge Michael Mukasey denied a motion from Omar Abdel Rahman and El Sayyid Nosair, suspects in a terrorist plot, to recuse himself because of his Jewish faith.

Mukasey declared that such a recusal would “disqualify not only an obscure district judge such as the author of this opinion, but also [supreme court justices] Brandeis and Frankfurter … each having been both a Jew and a Zionist”.