MGM has been ordered to turn over unaired Celebrity Apprentice footage in a lawsuit against Donald Trump and multiple members of his family over an alleged marketing scam.
A judge ruled that the never-before-seen footage be handed over to four unnamed people who claim they were ripped off in a scam that Trump and his children endorsed on the reality TV show.
US District Judge Lorna Schofield in Manhattan, New York, today told MGM that hundreds of hours of recordings from two episodes of the show which featured as guests marketing company ACN Opportunity must be disclosed.
‘It seems appropriate the tapes be made available,’ Schofield said during the hearing held over the phone due to the coronavirus pandemic.
In October 2018, the four plaintiffs filed a suit against Donald Trump, The Trump Corporation, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and Ivanka Trump for their part in promoting ACN from 2005 to 2015 – an investment that turned out to be a multilevel marketing company.
They claim the Trumps convinced them that investing in the firm held little or no risk.
Trump and his three children also failed to disclose that they were getting paid to endorse the firm.
The venture produced a desktop video phone and quickly failed when smartphones with video calling became widely adopted.
The unknown claimants say they lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in the scam.
Trump and his children have repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, with the president even dismissing his promotion of the company as ‘puffery’ that investors should not have relied on.
The order to hand over the potentially incriminating tapes comes just one day after the judge denied the Trumps’ request to force the dispute into arbitration.
Schofield denied the request Wednesday, saying the claimants did sign an arbitration agreement with ACN, but the Trumps weren’t a party to that contract.
She also slammed Trump and his family for seeking arbitration several months after going through the courts to gain access to documents from the plaintiffs.
The plaintiffs’ lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, welcomed the judge’s decisions.
‘With last night’s opinion and today’s rulings, the Court has cleared away a number of remaining obstacles created by the defendants and third parties to proper discovery in this case,’he said in a statement.
‘We look forward to continuing to gather the evidence to deliver justice for our brave clients, and thousands of others like them who were defrauded by the Trumps.’
Trump, who is well-known for voicing disputes in the public eye, is also yet to make any comments following today’s decision.
MGM is not involved in the lawsuit and has repeatedly said that compiling the requested evidence for the suit is a burden on the firm to search through ‘hundreds of hours of video footage’ that are stored ‘in obsolete formats’.
In a February filing, the studios argued the tapes weren’t relevant to the suit because the complaint is centered on what was broadcast on the show and branded the request a ‘speculative fishing expedition.’
This would mark the first time the unaired footage is seen from the reality show that the president starred in during his celebrity days before he entered the White House.
Former Apprentice contestant Summer Zervos is also fighting to get access to unaired footage from her time on the show as part of a defamation lawsuit against the president.
Zervos has accused Trump of sexually assaulting her in 2007 while filming the reality series.
Several other former contestants, including actor Tom Arnold and magician Penn Jillette, have also come forward from the show, saying the president was known to make sexist and ‘racially insensitive’ comments on set.
Arnold tried unsuccessfully to get access to footage that has not been publicly broadcasted for his 2018 TV series The Hunt for the Trump Tapes.