A New York State court ruled on Tuesday that one of the three fraud cases against Donald Trump for his now-defunct Trump University can move forward. The question before the appellate division of the New York Supreme Court had been over the statute of limitations; the GOP front-runner’s lawyers had claimed that it was three years, making the lawsuit, filed in 2013, untenable. Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman, who filed the case, claimed that it fell under a six-year statute, and the court agreed. Schneiderman called the decision “a clear victory in our effort to hold Donald Trump and Trump University accountable.”
Schneiderman is seeking $40 million in restitution for students who attended the for-profit Trump U., which was a series of unaccredited self-improvement seminars held in hotel ballrooms. Around 80,000 people attended TU’s introductory sessions, and thousands went on to spend five-figure sums on sessions that, they said, were led by salesmen trying to get them to spend more money and sign up for more classes. Whether the university actually defrauded people has not yet been decided. Trump called the case “nonsense” during the last debate on CNN. “It’s something I could have settled many times. I could settle it right now for very little money, but I don’t want to do it out of principle.”
