Some of the president’s past fraud is coming back to haunt him. On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Lorna Schofield of the Southern District of New York ruled that MGM must produce hundreds of hours of unaired footage from the production of President Donald Trump’s old reality television show The Celebrity Apprentice. Schofield delivered her ruling amidst a case brought by a selection of plaintiffs suing Trump after they signed up with a multilevel marketing scheme that he touted on the show. The president has been accused of hiding the fact that he was paid to endorse the company, thereby ensnaring himself in the sham.
The multilevel marketing company in question was called ACN Opportunity LLC, and plaintiffs in the case against Trump said that they collectively lost hundreds of thousands of dollars to the company’s schemes. The footage that Schofield demanded be produced specifically covers a short period when representatives of the company were on the set of Trump’s show. Along with the president, his children Ivanka, Donald Jr., and Eric Trump are all named as defendants in the ongoing suit. They apparently promoted the company in some form for a whopping ten years, from 2005 through 2015.
The plaintiffs’ attorney, Roberta Kaplan, insisted:
‘We look forward to continuing to gather the evidence to deliver justice for our brave clients, and thousands of others like them who were defrauded by the Trumps.’
President Trump himself has previously attempted to deflect blame for the fraud via insisting that his own behavior in support of the multilevel marketing company was just “puffery.” In this case, after seeking documents from the plaintiffs, the Trumps filed a request to have the ordeal moved out of the court and into arbitration — where the president’s side might be hoping to work out some kind of pay-off for those negatively affected by Trump’s schemes — but Schofield denied that motion on Wednesday. Trump attorney Joanna Hendon has indicated that she plans to appeal the judge’s denial of their motion for arbitration.
how soon before the long-rumored trump n-word tape drops? https://t.co/eZYMQQgExo
— Marlow Stern (@MarlowNYC) April 10, 2020
The tapes that Schofield ordered released are from the same era that others concerned about the president’s past have been seeking tapes from. There’s been a lot of talk about potentially in-existence tapes of Trump freely using racist slurs like the n-word, although none of those tapes have yet materialized — unlike the tape that has long circulated of Trump bragging about committing sexual assault on the set of a different show, Access Hollywood. In similar fashion to his dismissal of concern surrounding his ACN multilevel marketing endorsement, Trump dismissed those Access Hollywood comments as supposed “locker room talk.”
Journalists, litigants and even actor Tom Arnold for years have been trying to get their hands on unaired footage from 'The Celebrity Apprentice' that allegedly incriminates Trump — and on Thursday a New York federal judge ordered MGM to hand over tapes https://t.co/Um43flVHxO
— The Hollywood Reporter (@THR) April 9, 2020
Trump has repeatedly been caught in fraud before. In one of the most infamous cases, he faced investigations over “Trump University,” a program that he launched that had no relation to any kind of legitimate educational institution as suggested by the name.
Then-Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi was among those considering investigating, but after a “donation” from the Trump Foundation to her campaign, she dropped the plans and let Trump walk scot free. She went on to serve on his impeachment defense team.
