As a rule, defense attorneys like their clients to keep a fairly low profile and say very little about the case while the matter is being litigated. For Donald Trump’s lawyers, that’s a bit of a problem — because rhetorical restraint isn’t really an option under the circumstances.It’s why, as Bloomberg Politics reported, Trump’s legal team is taking steps to keep his political rhetoric away from “jurors who are set to decide next month whether he defrauded hundreds of students through his namesake real-estate school.”
Lawyers for the mogul in his Trump University case asked a judge to exclude a laundry list of statements made by him and about him including speeches and tweets, saying they’re irrelevant and would only “inflame and prejudice” jurors.”Before trial begins in this case, prospective members of the jury will have the opportunity to cast their vote for president,” Trump’s lawyers said in a filing late Thursday. “It is in the ballot box where they are free to judge Mr. Trump based on all this and more.”
This isn’t limited to Trump’s rhetoric about Trump University and this specific case. Politico‘s Josh Gerstein reported, the Republican candidate’s attorneys “also want to bar discussion of allegations that Trump may have paid no federal income taxes for as long as two decades, his personal charitable foundation, bankruptcies of various companies he owned or managed, and a series of comments he made alleging that Curiel was irredeemably biased because of his Latino background.”That’s quite a list.For what it’s worth, it’s not clear whether or not the plaintiffs have any intention of pursuing these lines of attacks in the case. This new effort appears to be a preventive measure.What’s more, it’s a request Curiel may reject. After all, in a case in which Trump has been accused of ripping off unsuspecting members of the public “campaign stuff shouldn’t count” isn’t an easy sell.Postscript: The Politico report added, “Trump’s legal team also wants to bar discussion of their client’s struggle to get the Better Business Bureau to change an ‘F’ rating it gave the so-called university.” That seems awfully relevant to the case, doesn’t it?
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."