Trump will testify after election in Trump University suit

FILE - In this Sunday, May 1, 2016 file photo, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump reacts to a song during a campaign rally at the Indiana Theater in Terre Haute, Ind. (AP Photo/Seth Perlman)
FILE - In this Sunday, May 1, 2016 file photo, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump reacts to a song during a campaign rally at the Indiana Theater in Terre Haute, Ind. (AP Photo/Seth Perlman)

SAN DIEGO — Donald Trump will testify after the presidential election on a class-action lawsuit that accuses the billionaire businessman and his now-defunct Trump University of defrauding people who paid up to $35,000 for real estate seminars, his attorney said Friday.

A federal judge in San Diego set a Nov. 28 trial, raising the possibility that Trump could take the stand as a president-elect if he wins the White House. The presumptive GOP nominee plans to attend most, if not all, of trial and will take the witness stand, Trump lawyer Daniel Petrocelli said.

Trump's attorneys resisted the idea of bringing the six-year-old case to trial while the real estate mogul was in the race, with Petrocelli asking for February trial. Plaintiffs had suggested June.

The lawsuit is one of three that accuse Trump University of fleecing students with unfulfilled promises to teach secrets of success in real estate.

The San Diego suit says Trump University, which no longer operates and was not accredited as a school, gave seminars and classes across the country that were like infomercials, constantly pressuring students to buy more and, in the end, failing to deliver.

Trump, who appears on a list of defense witnesses for the trial, has repeatedly pointed to a 98 percent satisfaction rate on internal surveys. But the lawsuit says students were asked to rate the product when they believed they still had more instruction to come and were reluctant to openly criticize their teachers on surveys that were not anonymous.

Since the early 1980s, Trump personally has been sued at least 150 times in federal court, records show. Only a handful of those cases are pending, with the ones involving Trump University being the most significant.

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