(Bloomberg) — Lawyers for investors in a troubled multilevel marketing company that Donald Trump promoted on “Celebrity Apprentice” say they have new questions for the former president based on unaired footage from the reality show they’ve viewed at MGM’s studio in Hollywood.
But after two members of the team who visited Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer tested positive for Covid-19, the attorneys are asking a judge to let them buy copies of the recordings — and skip further visits to the studio so they can finish the review process by early January.
The former president is in high demand for pretrial depositions since leaving office. Journalist E.J. Carroll wants Trump to sit for questioning by her lawyers — and provide a DNA sample — for her defamation case over his denial that he raped her in a department store dressing room two decades ago.
New York Attorney General Letitia James also is seeking to depose Trump as she investigates how he valued his real estate holdings. Trump already went through a deposition in October in a suit filed by protesters who said they were assaulted by his security staff outside Trump Tower in 2015.
Read More: Trump ‘Celebrity Apprentice’ Tapes Being Reviewed in Fraud Suit
ACN Inc. is a multilevel marketing company that promoted a desktop video phone which Trump said would “literally revolutionize the way we communicate.” Lawyers for people who say they were fraudulently induced by Trump to invest in ACN waited for almost two years to access the tapes held by MGM as part of a federal suit they filed against Trump and his children in 2018.
Depositions of the former president, along with Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump, should be conducted before April 29, attorneys for the investors said in a letter to a judge Tuesday.
“We already have identified multiple pieces of relevant footage which will serve as the basis for questioning at deposition,” they wrote.
Trump has denied wrongdoing and called his decadelong endorsement of ACN “puffery” that no reasonable investor would have relied upon.
The case is Doe v. Trump Corp., 18-cv-9936, U.S.District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).
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