Keeping track of all the criminal investigations and civil lawsuits Donald Trump is facing in 2022 is a full-time job. Fortunately, one of them can now be crossed off the list: the 2015 lawsuit brought forth by a group of demonstrators who claimed that Trump’s security guards assaulted them outside of Trump Tower. You know, the one that resulted in the admission that the former president believes there is a good chance he could be fatally injured by a piece of fruit. I’ll talk more about the fruit later.
Only a few days after the lawsuit went to trial, Trump negotiated a settlement agreement with the plaintiffs on Wednesday.
The lawsuit was based on an alleged attack by Trump’s security guards outside Trump Tower in September 2015 against a group of demonstrators who were protesting remarks Trump had made regarding Mexican immigrants during his presidential campaign.
Trump’s chief of security allegedly struck one of the protestors in the head while attempting to remove a placard that read, “Make America racist again,” according to the plaintiffs.
While Trump stated in an affidavit from February 2016 that he was unaware of the circumstances at the time and only learned about them the following day, his former fixer, Michael Cohen, claimed that was a lie in May.
Cohen stated under oath in a written deposition that he informed Trump of the demonstrators the moment he saw them that morning, and that the then-candidate allegedly directed his head of security, Keith Schiller, to “get rid of them.”
Cohen claims that when Schiller came back, he said to Trump, “I took the sign. I smacked him across the side of the head because he grabbed me, to which Trump allegedly replied, “Good.” In his own deposition from last October, Trump insisted that Schiller “did nothing illegal” but also claimed he “didn’t know about” what had occurred. Consequently, we now come to the part about the former president and his alleged aversion to flying fruit.
When asked by one of the attorneys if it was his “expectation” that one of his security guards would “knock the crap out of them” if they spotted someone preparing to hurl a tomato, Trump said yes and added that other fruits would also call for a beating.
“They toss a tomato, a pineapple, and a bunch of other things,” he claimed. “Yeah, I’d say you had to if the security observed that,’ They should, in my opinion, take vigorous action to prevent that. For the reason that you might die if that occurs. It’s a hazardous material. In addition, Cohen said during his May deposition that Trump constantly ruminated over a 1998 event in which Bill Gates was struck by a pie as he entered a building.
Anyway! The complaint “was resolved on conditions that they are very, very delighted with,” according to the protestors’ lawyer Benjamin Dictor, who also signed a statement on Wednesday noting that “all people…have a right to engage in peaceful protest on public sidewalks.”
It’s unclear why Trump decided to settle, but it’s probable that he was concerned about the amount of money he would have to fork up, especially given the venue of the trial. Before the jury selection process began, Pace University law professor Randolph McLaughlin told The Guardian that Bronx jurors “engage in Robinhood-ism.
They take from the wealthy and give to the rest of us; their judgments are almost always accurate. The Bronx has no boundaries. They enjoy giving people money. Even while he has popularity in some parts of the country, Donald Trump is not well-liked in the Bronx.
