Five years after Donald Trump was deposed in a fraud case against the failed Trump University, a video of the session has finally emerged.
The footage, which runs to six hours, shows the president repeatedly denying knowledge of various basic facts about the “university” – even the names of teaching staff, whom he had previously claimed were picked by him.
Mother Jones, which obtained the video from an unidentified source, writes that while the transcript of the deposition was released in 2016, the Trump team’s success in keeping the video from release deprived Hillary Clinton of some of the choicest footage that exists of Mr Trump being confronted with allegations against one of his businesses.
At the time, the future president was confronted with multiple lawsuits from former students of Trump University, some of whom had paid many thousands of dollars to attend its seminars in hopes of understanding the secrets of Mr Trump’s success.
The university, which opened in 2005 and first came under legal investigation in 2011, has since been described in various media as a “scam”. In one sworn affidavit, a onetime Trump University salesman gave a damning account: “Based upon my personal experience and employment, I believe that Trump University was a fraudulent scheme, and that it preyed upon the elderly and uneducated to separate them from their money.”
In one of the more embarrassing sections of the newly released video, one of the lawyers deposing Mr Trump questions his claims not to recall the details relevant to the fraud allegations, pointing out that he on more than one occasion described himself as having “one of the all-time great memories” – a claim he has made more than once since the deposition was recorded. Mr Trump claims not to remember saying this, simply reverting to “I have a good memory”.
The video also sees Mr Trump confronted with his past praise for political adversaries, including Jeb Bush (“exactly the kind of political leader this country needs right now”) and Hillary Clinton (“she’s a terrific person, works hard, and I think she does a good job”) – praise which he had later claimed he gave simply because he needed their support for business projects.
