Before he took office, Donald Trump was involved in a truly astronomical number of lawsuits. A USA Today report published in 2016 found that there had been 3,500 legal actions filed by and against Trump and his hundreds of businesses in federal and state courts, ranging from sexual harassment to contract violations to class-actions for misleading advertising, and settled at least 100 of them. It surprised many in the pundit class that this staggering history of legal activity was not enough to dissuade American voters from electing Trump. And, just as with tweeting, he did not leave behind his habits regarding lawsuits when entered the Oval Office.
A Politico report found that to date, the Trump campaign has paid roughly $4 million in “legal consulting” and “legal fees,” primarily for work in continuing civil cases “alleging assault, incitement, threats, and other illegal behavior by the president, his supporters, and his staff,” more than double the amount paid by Barack Obama's 2008 campaign, reported Politico. (The campaign’s primary law firm, Jones Day, has received $3.3 million in fees from settled and pending lawsuits.) The campaign itself had been marked by several acts of physical violence, ranging from Trump supporters assaulting protesters at his rallies to his former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski getting into an altercation with a female reporter. And one lawsuit, in which depositions of "high-level" Trump administration members will be taken in the coming weeks, alleges that Trump’s North Carolina campaign state director, Earl Phillip, pulled a gun on a former campaign staffer, and that the campaign's top hands had failed to act after they were told about it.
As reported by Politico, those settlements appear to have been intentionally obscured in the Trump campaign’s Federal Election Commission filings, which listed some settlement payouts as “legal consulting,” such as in one $10,000 payment to Heather Blaise, a lawyer representing a British photographer who had sued Trump, his son Donald Jr., and Vice President Mike Pence, for allegedly misappropriating one of his photos. (“That’s interesting. I have never been retained as counsel or a consultant to the campaign,” Blaise told Politico.)
“Basically, the Trump campaign was run just like the Trump Organization,” said election law attorney Brett Kappel to Politico. “Lawsuits are met with bluster and invective and then ultimately settled quietly with everyone involved required to sign nondisclosure agreements so that the public would not know that Trump, in fact, does settle many of the lawsuits against him and his family members.” (Representatives for Trump pushed back against the allegations, saying that Trump was a target for ambulance chasers seeking financial gain.)
Ironically, when it comes to the lawsuits filed against the campaign by local protesters at campaign rallies held across the country alleging that Trump supporters had beaten them up, Trump has been characteristically stingy with the firms defending him. Politico found that Trump had not paid anything to a Birmingham, Alabama, firm defending Trump and his campaign against an African-American man who alleged that Trump had goaded a crowd into assaulting him, and has paid only $734.58 to a Louisville firm defending him against similar allegations in Kentucky. (Considering USA Today’s other bombshell report from 2016, which found that Trump routinely stiffed law firms he had hired, this should be a surprise to no one.)
Though Trump quickly settled several of his business lawsuits before he entered office (“without admission of guilt,” as he once bragged during a debate), more campaign lawsuits are still pending against him. And as of February 2017, the Trump administration added some more, and faces more than 50 pending lawsuits, all related to his actions as president, from civil rights to travel bans. And though he may have a casual regard for lawsuits, the billionaire investor will likely soon realize that one cannot make settlements on lawsuits involving constitutional violations.
