Judge to let students take Trump to court

Just hours after Donald Trump accepted the Republican presidential nomination in Cleveland, a federal judge in San Diego said he plans to allow former students of Trump University to take the billionaire candidate to trial.

Trump’s lawyers argue that sales "puffery" doesn’t amount to racketeering in an attempt to end one of two class-action lawsuits by former Trump University enrollees who claim they were cheated with false promises into paying as much as $35,000 for real-estate seminars and workshops.

U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel said at the start of Friday’s hearing that his tentative ruling is to reject Trump’s request and let the case go forward. Curiel said he will issue a final ruling later. He’s set a November 28 start date for the other trial.

Trump has already injected politics into the case, claiming earlier rulings by the judge, born in Indiana to Mexican immigrants, were retribution for the candidate’s pledge to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico. Separately, Curiel is also considering whether videos of Trump’s sworn testimony in the case should be made public over the billionaire’s objection.

The former students, who enrolled to learn Trump’s real estate secrets, are seeking compensation under federal racketeering laws that have been used successfully to prosecute organised crime bosses. The federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO also allows for lawsuits that can result in a jury award being tripled.

The racketeering case was filed in 2013 after Curiel had denied a request to add the RICO claim to the earlier consumer-fraud lawsuit against Trump and his school.