US president-elect Donald Trump heads to court later this month to face charges that he ran a scheme that “preyed upon the elderly and uneducated to separate them from their money”. It’s the first of an unprecedented slew of legal issues to face an incoming president.

On Thursday, Judge Gonzalo Curiel will hold a hearing on jury instruction and what evidence can be admitted in the class action lawsuit brought by students of the president-elect’s now defunct Trump University.

Trump attracted major criticism during the campaign from politicians on both sides when he attacked Indiana-born Curiel, calling him “a total disgrace” who “happens to be, we believe, Mexican, which is great”.

Trump later told the Wall Street Journal that Curiel was biased and had “an inherent conflict of interest” as someone with Mexican heritage because of Trump’s plans to build a wall to keep Mexicans out of the US.

The first day of the trial, at which he has been called as a witness by both sides, is set for 28 November. Daniel Petrocelli, Trump’s lawyer, has attempted to delay the trial, however Curiel seems intent on starting it before the inauguration.

The hearing is the first of an unprecedented slew of legal difficulties that the president-elect must overcome.

Trump is suing celebrity chef José Andrés for pulling out of his just-opened Washington DC hotel. Andrés, a Spanish-born immigrant, found Trump’s explicit racism so offensive that he joined Hillary Clinton’s campaign, declaring himself “a proud immigrant”. Trump sued him for $10m; Andrés countersued for $8m.



There is a mediation scheduled between Trump’s Washington hotel and Andrés on 29 November, the day after the Trump University hearing, according to a clerk at the DC district court where Trump is suing his former employee.

In solidarity with Andrés, a fellow celebrity chef, Geoffrey Zakarian, also pulled out of Trump’s DC hotel, which opened two weeks ago a stone’s throw from the White House. Trump is suing him as well, for damages “in excess of $10m”. Their mediation is scheduled for next year in the same court as the suit against Andrés.

While Trump has plenty of legal dates in his calendar already, he faces more. The New York attorney general, Eric Schneiderman, who filed another suit against Trump University in 2013, is continuing his investigations.



Schneiderman’s office is also investigating the president-elect’s namesake charity, the Donald J Trump Foundation, for alleged violations of the tax code governing nonprofit organizations.

There is also the case of Kashiya Nwanguma, a woman who is suing Trump for inciting violence at a a rally in Louisville, Kentucky. The violence was caught in a video. One of the men pushing Nwanguma is prominent white nationalist Matthew Heimbach, who is also named in the suit. The suit is waiting for western district of Kentucky judge David Hale to rule on two motions to dismiss, a clerk told the Guardian.

Trump has Bill Clinton to thank for the fact that his legal woes will follow him into the White House. In 1997, the supreme court ruled that a sitting president is not immune from litigation over actions taken before he took office. Clinton was being sued by Paula Jones, now a Trump ally, who accused Clinton of sexual harassment. Clinton became the first president to be interrogated under oath as a defendant in a civil lawsuit or before a grand jury as a possible criminal target. He settled the suit a year later.