Why Trump lawyers won’t ask Trump University judge to step aside

There is a curious disconnect between what the presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump says in public about the judge overseeing two class actions claiming Trump University was a swindle and what Trump’s lawyers do in court.

The candidate, as you know, has suggested that U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel of San Diego is biased against him because Curiel – an Indiana native whose parents were immigrants from Mexico – disapproves of Trump’s immigration policies. Despite criticism of his comments from luminaries in his own party, Trump has refused to back down, calling the judge’s heritage “an absolute conflict” in an interview last week with the Wall Street Journal.

But in court, where the Trump University litigation has been plodding along since 2010, there has been nary a suggestion that Judge Curiel should be removed from the case – not for his Mexican roots or for any other reason. And no matter what Trump says, his defense lawyers at O’Melveny & Myers are exceedingly unlikely to file a motion asking the judge to step aside, or recuse himself, based on what we know today.

In fact, if O’Melveny were to file a recusal motion, according to two law professors and three private lawyers specializing in legal ethics, Trump’s lawyers would expose themselves to sanctions under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and to discipline by state bar associations.

As many, many legal experts have opined in the past few days, a federal judge’s ethnicity or national origin cannot serve as the basis for a claim of judicial bias. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, for instance, held in its 1998 opinion in MacDraw Inc v. CIT Group that U.S. District Judge Denny Chin (now on the appeals court) was within his rights to sanction two lawyers who asked whether his Asian ancestry prejudiced him against them. (They were involved in completely separate litigation against an Asian fundraiser for President Bill Clinton, who appointed Chin.) “Courts have repeatedly held that matters such as race or ethnicity are improper bases for challenging a judge’s impartiality,” the 2nd Circuit said. Added Alexandra Lahav, who specializes in legal ethics at the University of Connecticut: “There is no basis in the law or our legal history. It’s antithetical to the rule of law.”

http://blogs.reuters.com/alison-fra...ont-ask-trump-university-judge-to-step-aside/

 

Good reason not to antagonize the judge. Of course Trump has taken advantage of Hispanics, legal and illegal ... as well as other illegals, Polish workers as an example.