Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi (R) considered joining a multi-state case against “Trump University,” but after the Trump Foundation contributed ,000 to a political fundraising committee supporting Bondi’s re-election campaign, the Florida Republican ended her investigation.
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Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump renewed attacks on the Mexican-American judge overseeing lawsuits relating to Trump University, leading a top Republican to express his fear Trump is doing permanent damage to the GOP with Hispanic voters. I am not judging whether Curiel is actually biased against Trump. “And so, he clearly says and does things I don’t agree with, and I’ve had to speak up on time to time when that has occurred, and I’ll continue to do that if it’s necessary”.
“He’s a member of a society, where you know, very pro-Mexico and that’s fine, it’s all fine”, Trump continued. But the president has to be clear that the law is the law and that he enforces the law. That decision is subject to review by a federal appeals court.
Those ideas, though, did not single out judges or focus on race, ethnicity or religion.
“We ought to be trying to unify, he ought to be trying to unify the party behind him”, McConnell said of Trump.
Mr. Trump said “thousands and thousands” of people have given the course great reviews and that he should have won the case on summary judgment. Trump has since backed off on that.
Trump said Curiel’s ethnic background created an “inherent conflict of interest” because Trump has promised to build a wall along the US-Mexico border and deport immigrants who are in the country illegally. But Trump has now upped his attack, telling the Wall Street Journal that Curiel has “an absolute conflict” because “of Mexican heritage”.
Curiel, who was born in IN, is of Mexican descent. For this reason, ethics codes for judges – including the federal code of conduct governing Curiel – require not only that judges actually be impartial, but that they avoid even the “appearance of impropriety”.
In a May 27 speech in San Diego, Trump spent 12 minutes talking about the lawsuit and bashing Judge Gonzalo Curiel, a former prosecutor who took on the Arellano Felix cartel before being appointed to the state bench by then-Gov. Trump has maintained that customers were overwhelmingly satisfied. Now Trump wants the judge dismissed because his ethnicity poses a “conflict of interest” – seriously.
Trump’s attacks befuddle experts, including Luis Osuna, Director of the San Diego La Raza Lawyers Association, of which Curiel is a member. He went on to insist the judge should disqualify himself from the case because of his connections to a lawyer of one of the litigants.
American Bar Association President Paulette Brown said personal criticism of a judge undermines judicial independence.
An independent judiciary is extremely important. Federal judges decide for themselves whether they should step aside because of possible biases that might influence the outcome of a case.
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“This judge is giving us unfair rulings”, he said.
