An attorney of President-elect Donald Trump said Friday that his client made a personal sacrifice when he agreed to resolve three fraud lawsuits against him for $25 million.
SAN DIEGO — An attorney for President-elect Donald Trump said Friday that his client made a personal sacrifice when he agreed to resolve three fraud lawsuits against him for $25 million.
Daniel Petrocelli said Trump agreed to settle the Trump University lawsuits on one big condition — that he would admit no wrongdoing. By settling the case now, Petrocelli said, Trump avoids the distractions that could have come with one of the cases scheduled to go to trial here Nov. 28.
In January, Trump is to be sworn in as the 45th president of the United States. The lawsuits threatened to take time away from his duties as president and president-elect.
With the settlement, more than 7,000 former Trump University students now stand to get more than half their money back, up to around $35,000. The first of the three cases was filed in 2010 and accused Trump University of ripping off students and not delivering the education they were promised in real estate investing.
"He was willing to sacrifice his personal interest, put this behind him and move forward," Petrocelli said after the court hearing here announcing the settlement.
Asked if Trump would have settled the case if he were not elected president on Nov. 8, Petrocelli told USA TODAY he didn't know.
"I'm not sure what path we would have taken," he said.
But if he did settle, Petrocelli said, Trump was adamant that there would be no admission of fault. That's a common provision in civil settlements such as this. In this case, it would have looked especially bad for Trump if that wasn't made clear. If the case went to trial, a jury could have found him liable for fraud, possibly opening the door to impeachment proceedings on those grounds, some legal scholars said.
Trump's attorneys denied the fraud allegations and have said more than 95% of Trump University attendees rated the program as positive on evaluation forms.
And that's just fine for the plaintiffs who sued him. Their attorneys agreed to put in more than six years of work on this case pro bono, meaning they will not receive attorneys' fees. Their agreement not to receive such fees facilitated an easier road to settlement and more money for their clients.
In the end, the election may have been the biggest factor in getting a deal done with Trump, whose famous book is titled The Art of the Deal. Trump would have had to testify in the proceedings, possibly in a video-recorded session and not in court.
In this case, it even brought together Trump and Petrocelli, who previously donated to the campaign of Hillary Clinton, the presidential candidate Trump defeated in the Nov. 8 election.
After the hearing, Petrocelli was asked if he voted for his client to become president.
He laughed at the question at first but wouldn't say.
"I don't think we want to talk about voting here," said Petrocelli, who is based in Southern California and previously helped win a wrongful death case against former football star O.J. Simpson.
Federal Election Commission records show Petrocelli donated $2,700 to the Clinton campaign in January — nearly two months after he joined the case as Trump's attorney in November 2015. He previously donated $1,000 to Clinton's U.S. Senate campaign in 1999 and 2000.
"I had contributed in the past, but I was very, very pleased that our client prevailed in this election," Petrocelli said.