“It’s an inherent conflict of interest”, Trump said, adding that the judge is a member of the San Diego La Raza Lawyers Association (which Trump spokeswoman Katrina Pierson mistakenly identified as National Council of La Raza, an advocacy group that organizes protests against the Republican nominee) and should therefore recuse himself from the case.
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Curiel was born in IN and is of Mexican heritage. And while it’s true that he was appointed to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California by Obama in 2012, he was confirmed by the Democrat-controlled Senate without opposition and had begun his career in the U.S. Justice Department under former President George H.W. Bush.
Moreover, while Trump is free to say anything he wants about the judge, the lawyers in the case are bound by the professional rules of conduct and could be sanctioned for making such charges about Curiel without actual evidence of bias. The Republican presidential candidate also told the Wall Street Journal that he believes that Curiel is biased because he is the former colleague of an attorney representing one of the plaintiffs in a Trump University case. He insisted he should have won the case and would have, if the judge involved weren’t Latino.
Trump has promised to hold Curiel accountable if elected. Do you really think being called [names] by Mr. Trump is going to frighten him? There should be no trial. So says Donald Trump, in just one of the recent comments by the presumptive Republican presidential nominee that have legal experts worrying about his commitment to an independent judiciary and his views on presidential powers. “He’s a hater. His name is Gonzalo Curiel”.
Trump has issued a litany of attacks on U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who is overseeing two class-action lawsuits against Trump University. Trump is stating in plain language that the judge responsible for handling lawsuits filed against him can not be trusted to do his job properly because of his Mexican heritage. I have a case that should have been dismissed already. Where everybody likes it. Okay.
“Now he’s out saying this judge is a total disgrace, that they ought to look into him, and he’s on the precipice of becoming the president of the United States”, Kelly said.
The judge seemingly raised Trump’s ire anew last week when he ordered the release of documents that had been sealed.
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You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to discern that Donald Trump is a racist, and you don’t have to be a legal scholar to realize that Trump University is a scam. Has the defendant every said anything critical about white people? “It is not, unfortunately, surprising, given the source of the comments”. He said the family was “worried about it at the time that we heard about the death threats”.
