New York state's top prosecutor applauds a California judge's decision
to release more documents pertaining to a lawsuit against Donald Trump's now-defunct namesake real-estate school, likening the operation to a "three-card Monte game."
New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and the GOP presumptive presidential nominee have been embroiled in a bitter battle over Trump University since the Democratic attorney general filed a $40 million lawsuit in 2013, claiming students were bilked. That case is expected to head to trial as early as November,
Politico reports.
"You’re not allowed to protect the trade secrets of a three-card monte game," Schneiderman said in an interview Tuesday
on CNN, referring to efforts by Trump's lawyers in California to keep "playbooks" describing the real-estate school under wraps.
"Sections of the playbooks have been laid out in our papers that we've submitted in the New York court. It is clearly just a motivational speech to try to sell people at their weekend seminar that you can't possibly learn everything about real estate in three days. You got to spend $10,000, $20,000 on what were called the Trump elite program, so the playbook just shows it was a pitch up to try to dupe these people into spending more money."
Schneiderman said Trump's legal team been trying to quash the release of documents in the California case, and has fought against having the case go to trial.
"This was a fraud from top to bottom," Schneiderman said. "He’s using every trick he can do to delay the release of documents, to delay the trials — attacking the judge for his ethnicity, attacking me and accusing me of conspiring with the president of the United States."
"Telling people who are in hard economic times, we're talking about 2008, 2009, people desperate to hold onto their homes, to make some money, convincing them that he will teach them his entrepreneurial secrets," Schneiderman tells CNN.
"They would get them to raise credit limits and then use that extra credit to make them buy more Trump seminars… They bilked people. It was shameless and heartless. It's important information to get out there and I think that between the judge releasing these records and other things, I hope all the facts will get out that can between now and the election. I think it's important public policy. "