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Trump seeks to dismiss lawsuit

Complaint filed by former customer

SAN DIEGO — Donald Trump’s lawyers will be in court to try to get a lawsuit dismissed alleging that the business mogul defrauded customers who took courses with false promises of teaching success in real estate at the now-defunct Trump University.

Lawyers will appear today before U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel to argue that a lawsuit lacks merit. The complaint, filed in 2013 by former customer Art Cohen, is one of two class-action lawsuits that Trump is facing in San Diego over Trump University before the same judge. Trump also faces a lawsuit in New York.

The lawsuits allege that Trump University gave seminars and classes in hotel ballrooms across the country that were like infomercials, constantly pressuring customers to buy more and, in the end, failing to deliver. Cohen went to a three-day seminar in 2009 in Palo Alto, Calif., for $1,495 and bought into the “Gold Elite” mentorship program for $34,995.

Trump University’s sales pitches “are classic examples of sales puffery common to advertising everywhere,” his lawyers argued in court documents, arguing the lawsuit is an abuse of federal racketeering conspiracy statutes. Lawyers for the plaintiff wrote mockingly that the Trump’s lawyers should argue their case on Earth, not in “District Court in Bizarro World.”

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