If you’ve going to have a fight with someone, there are real advantages to picking on a federal judge. Judicial rules mean you can be just about as obnoxious as you want, and know that your opponent isn’t going to make a public reply. On the other hand, there are some issues—like the fact that you’re picking on a federal judge. This may tend to have the result that said judge doesn’t quite bend over backwards to make things easy for you in court.
A big part of Trump’s previous rants against Judge Gonzalo Curiel had to do with Curiel’s willingness to release some of the records related to Trump University, records that didn’t exactly make Trump’s educational con job look any less like a con job. Now that Trump has made an even bigger jackass of himself talking about the Mexican-from-Indiana judge, he’s back in front of that same judge begging for a favor.
Lawyers for presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump are intensifying their drive to make sure the public doesn't see videos of Trump's recent testimony in connection with class-action fraud lawsuits over his Trump University real estate seminar program.
In a court filing late Wednesday night, Trump's attorneys argued explicitly for the first time that the deposition videos should be kept under wraps because they would become weapons in the ongoing presidential contest.
So Trump is explicitly admitting that what he said in his testimony could stand against him in the election, but then, this is Trump’s own testimony, so what he says is going to be very, very hard for him to disown. And if there’s such a big public interest, why shouldn’t it be seen?
Hmm. What’s a judge to do? There’s a tradition—though not a law—around keeping video testimony of sitting presidents out of the public eye for a reasonable period. There’s no such tradition for candidates, no matter how much Trump’s team of lawyers is scrambling to make that claim.
Trump is just going to have to depend on the goodwill of the judge. That shouldn’t be an issue.