A federal judge is ordering the release of Trump University internal documents in a class-action lawsuit against the now-defunct real estate school owned by presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. The order by US district judge Gonzalo Curiel in San Diego, which came Friday in response to a request by the Washington Post, calls for the documents to be released by Thursday. The Post reported the order in a story on its website Saturday.
Trump University has been cited in anti-Trump political ads during the primary campaign as evidence that Mr Trump doesn’t fulfil his promises.
Mr Trump’s lawyers deny any wrongdoing in the case before Mr Curiel as well as another class-action suit in San Diego and a $40 million lawsuit filed in 2013 by the state of New York alleging that more than 5,000 people had been defrauded. The New York real estate mogul, for his part, has claimed that Mr Curiel is a “hater of Donald Trump” and should be ashamed of how he has handled the case.
Mr Trump also has questioned whether Mr Curiel, who is Hispanic, is biased against him because of his call for deporting immigrants in the US illegally.
“Big data” could play a huge role in the 2016 US election, even if Donald Trump doesn’t think so.
Mr Trump, who sailed through the Republican primaries using unconventional campaign rallies and Twitter messages, has indicated that he sees little use for popular data analytics tools to help target specific voters.
But analysts say he may be at a disadvantage in the general election if he stays on that course.
“In the primaries, he was only looking for Republican voters, and in the general he needs all voters,” said Alan Rosenblatt, a digital political strategist.
“Unless he starts to be more sophisticated in how he targets his message, he’s not going to have a good sense of where he’s going to win and not win and where he should put his resources.”
