Trump deposed in lawsuit against chef José Andrés
President-elect Donald Trump has been deposed in the restaurant lawsuit he filed against José Andrés for backing out of a deal to open a restaurant in his Washington, D.C. hotel. Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks confirmed to CBS News that on Thursday morning, Mr. Trump answered questions under oath related to the lawsuit.
This is one of two lawsuits the president-elect is involved in related to restaurants he planned for the hotel, which opened late last year. Mr. Trump’s lawyers had tried in December to have the deposition in the breach-of-contract lawsuit against Andrés delayed, but the judge said it had to take place this week.
In the other case, which is similar, lawyers for Mr. Trump told a judge this week that they have not been able to reach a settlement in the lawsuit over celebrity chef Geoffrey Zakarian’s withdrawal from a restaurant he, too, had agreed to open at the same hotel.
The two sides in the Zakarian case have been in settlement talks since early last year. Both parties said they will continue to try to work out a deal, but they have asked the judge to put a trial date on the calendar.
Both Zakarian and Andrés pulled out of their separate deals with Mr. Trump came shortly after he made his controversial remarks about Mexican immigrants. He referred to them as people “bringing drugs,...bringing crime. They’re rapists,” during his June 2015 presidential announcement. The two chefs both considered those remarks from Mr. Trump a breach of “good faith and fair dealing.”
