Donald Trump deposition from June offers insight into campaign
Donald Trump's testimony in a closed-door testimony last month indicates he had planned his verbal attack on Mexican immigrants in advance, and didn't care if his comments would upset business partners, according to Politico.
The Republican nominee is currently suing two celebrity chefs, José Andres and Geoffrey Zakarian, after they scuttled deals to build restaurants in two new Trump Organization properties. Andres and Zakarian contend that Trump's remarks about Mexicans in his kickoff address, in which Trump alleged rapists and criminals were crossing the southern border en masse, left them with no choice but to back out.
When asked by Zakarian's lawyer last month in a closed-door deposition whether Trump had put any thought into how those comments would affect "tenants in your current or future projects," the mogul said no. The deposition occurred on June 16th, and the transcripts were released last Thursday.
Trump also said he had thought out his comments about Mexicans in advance, but had not written them down. He also blamed the media for being "very dishonest" about interpreting his comments.
"But all I'm doing is bringing up a situation which is very real, about illegal immigration," Trump said. "And I think, you know, most people think I'm right."
Trump is suing Zakarian for $14 million. Zakarian, like Andres, had agreed to build a restaurant in a new Trump property in Washington, D.C., at the Old Post Office just blocks from the White House, but he said the project wasn't "viable anymore" after Trump's comments.
"The fact of the matter is [Trump] poisoned the space," Zakarian said. His lawyers contend that Trump is entitled to nothing from the broken agreement because all losses are strictly hypothetical. Trump's team, on the other hand, says that Zakarian owes Trump $1 million in renovation costs to convert the space, $5 million in lost revenue, and $8 million in lost rent.
However, Trump acknowledged that there was no surefire way to predict how well the restaurant would have done.
"Honestly, you never know," Trump said.
Trump's family handled much of the project, and Zakarian reached out to Donald Trump Jr. in an effort to get his father to retract his comments about Mexican immigrants, while Andres reached out to Ivanka Trump. Zakarian says that when Donald Trump instead doubled down on the remarks, he had no choice but to break the contract, a move that came one day after Andres pulled out of his deal with Trump.
According to Trump Jr., Zakarian voiced no objections until Andres announced he would not build his restaurant. "I think once José dropped out there must have been some additional pressure on him to try to act," Trump Jr. said.
Zakarian, meanwhile, insisted that he had many reasons to not build the restaurant.
"There's reputation. There's financial," he said. "There's ... familial reasons, because moralistically speaking, all my employees are Mexicans or Hispanics, almost all of them. It's disgraceful."