Trump’s lawyers to judge: Campaign stuff shouldn’t count

[UCmeNdc]

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.”

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/trumps-lawyers-judge-campaign-stuff-shouldnt-count

[no_hypocrisy]

1. I disagree. Trump's campaign statements are public record.

The genie is out of the bottle, the toothpaste out of the tube.

[chillfactor]

2. I hope the judge...

ignores t'rumps lawyers.

[NCTraveler]

3. They are public statements.

The only way I see them winning this argument is if they lay out all the moments of dishonesty in his campaign and actually attach that directly to strategy. For a judge to rule that as valid he would have to see internal campaign memo's outlining that as a centerpiece of his strategy.