Trump asks judge to ‘punish’ lawyers who released fruit fears testimony
Donald Trump has asked a judge to punish the lawyers who released parts of a deposition that revealed his fears about being hit with “dangerous” fruit by protesters.
The ex-president’s testimony — given in a lawsuit that alleges his security guards assaulted demonstrators outside Trump Tower in 2015 — was made public last week by the attorneys for the plaintiffs in the case.
Trump counsel Alina Habba accused the lawyers of acting in “bad faith conduct” as she filed a motion seeking for them to be sanctioned over the move.
Releasing the 60 pages of deposition transcript was “a blatant attempt to garner unwarranted media attention and to irreparably taint the potential jury pool,” she charged.
“In short, plaintiffs’ counsel has improperly sought to weaponize the media against the defendants in this matter,” states the motion, filed in Bronx Supreme Court late Friday.
In the October deposition, Trump said he worried about being hit by a tomato or pineapple at rallies, claiming it could be lethal and instructing his team to “knock the crap” out of any fruit-slinger.
“Well, a tomato, a pineapple, a lot of other things they throw,” the transcript reads. “Yeah, if the security saw that, I would say you have to — and it’s not just me, it’s other people in the audience, get badly hurt.
“Yeah, I think they have to be aggressive in stopping that from happening,” Trump said. “Because if that happens, you can be killed if that happens.”
Habba noted that Trump’s legal team had given the protesters’ lawyers “prior warning” to keep the transcript under wraps until the trial.
Both sides are seeking to postpone the trial — which had been slated to begin Monday with jury selection — with the plaintiffs claiming they need more time to take testimony from Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen.
It has recently emerged that Cohen claimed he heard Trump tell his staff to “get rid of” the protesters, contradicting his sworn testimony that he didn’t learn about the demonstration until a day or so later.
Habba said Cohen will now have the ability to read Trump’s testimony and “tailor his responses” in his own upcoming deposition, which would be prejudicial to her client.
She also claimed that the protesters’ attorneys tried to “ambush” Trump by seeking to add Cohen as a witness on the eve of trial.
“Mr. Cohen, a convicted perjurer, is an outspoken critic of [Trump] with a well-documented vendetta against him,” Habba alleged in the filing.
“The press, Mr. Cohen, and a potential jury pool can now access and view the testimony weeks before the trial is set to begin,” she wrote in the court papers.
Habba asked the court to force the plaintiff’s side to pay for some legal fees and for “an additional financial penalty … to punish plaintiffs’ counsel for their bad-faith conduct,” the court documents state.
Benjamin Dictor, a lawyer for the protesters, told The Post, “Defendants’ filing is rife with errors of fact and law and we will be responding accordingly in a court filing.”
