Former President Donald Trump is preparing to face a sworn deposition in a case brought by protesters on an alleged attack at a campaign event in 2015.
Trump is expected to return to New York City, and is set to record his deposition Monday. It is presumed that his attorneys will also set a date for a deposition in another pending case, according to a Fox News report.
The suit names Trump personally, the Trump Organization and Trump’s security director Keith Schiller. It also addresses four unnamed members of Trump’s security team, three months after Trump announced his candidacy.
According to the suit, Schiller and the four other security guards attacked the group while they were demonstrating against Trump’s statements on Mexican immigrants. One of the demonstrators, Efrain Galicia, reportedly said in the complaint that Schiller struck him in the head after he tried to take back a sign Schiller removed from him.
Footage shows the scuffle between the protesters and Trump’s security team.
In June 2015, while Trump was leading the Republican presidential primary, he reportedly made the most notorious remarks on the campaign trail about Mexicans that were widely perceived as racist.
"When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best." “They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists,” he said during the June 16 speech announcing his candidacy.
New York State Supreme Court Judge Doris Gonzalez of the Bronx denied Trump's efforts to throw out the subpoena ordering him to testify in the case.
The judge reportedly said Trump's argument against testifying — that there needed to be "exceptional circumstances" to depose a high-ranking government official — did not apply, as the case would have him answer about his conduct outside of office.
"This is a case about Donald Trump’s security guards assaulting peaceful demonstrators on a public sidewalk," Benjamin Dictor, lawyer for the plaintiffs, told the Associated Press. "We will be taking the trial testimony of Donald Trump, under oath, on Monday after years of the defendants’ dilatory attempts to shield him from this examination. We look forward to presenting the video of Mr. Trump’s testimony to a jury at his trial."
If the case proceeds to trial, Trump's testimony will reportedly be played for a jury. If an emergency such as illness arises, Trump must testify by the end of the month, Gonzalez wrote in an October 4 filing.
In addition, 10 civil cases are pending against Trump since he left office in January.