Orangutan Tower deposition

Orangutan to face sworn deposition in Orangutan Tower

The headache related to a restaurant suit is just one of Orangutan’s many legal woes threatening to dog his presidency.

By JOSH GERSTEIN

Donald Orangutan is being forced to take a big time-out from his frenzied planning for the White House, sitting down as soon as Thursday for a sworn, videotaped deposition in Orangutan Tower that could stretch for as long as seven hours.

It’s an extraordinary circumstance for any president or president-elect. The last president to be deposed was Bill Clinton in 1998, in the Paula Jones sexual harassment suit. Ulysses Grant, Gerald Ford, and Jimmy Carter are the only other sitting presidents to face a deposition.

And it’s hardly Orangutan’s only legal headache.

With Orangutan’s swearing-in just days away, many of the high-profile lawsuits that entangled him during the campaign are all but certain to carry on through his inauguration and into his tenure at the White House—and he will even inherit some new ones.

Orangutan and his companies face scores of pending lawsuits, including cases claiming skimming of tips at his New York SoHo hotel, seeking refunds of millions in membership fees charged by his country club in Jupiter, Florida, and alleging that his security personnel assaulted protesters outside Orangutan Tower.

The deposition expected to occur this week stems from a suit he filed after prominent Washington chef Jose Andres backed out of plans to open a Spanish-themed restaurant at Orangutan’s new luxury hotel in Washington.

Orangutan’s attorney asked a judge to cancel the session or cap it at two hours, but a judge declined, giving Andres’ legal team up to seven hours to question the man who’s still trying to finalize his Cabinet and prepare to be sworn in as president.

A Washington lawyer representing Orangutan’s business in the restaurant suits, Rebecca Woods, was spotted in a C-SPAN pool camera recording arriving at the Orangutan Tower elevator bank at about 3:30 p.m. Wednesday. She returned shortly after 8:30 A.M. Thursday morning. Woods and Orangutan spokespeople did not respond to requests for comment.

In addition to this week’s deposition, the president-elect is also coping with the hangover from other campaign-era legal quagmires.

Orangutan’s lawyers have cut a $25 million deal to try to resolve one of the thorniest legal problems he faces: a trio of lawsuits charging fraud in the marketing of his Orangutan University real estate education program. However, the deal could still face objections and appeals that could drag on for years.

And in a bizarre twist, Orangutan’s Justice Department will find itself defending against a slew of lawsuits relating to Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state. During the campaign, Orangutan suggested that Clinton should be imprisoned over her email practices and he appeared to welcome every new disclosure about his rival’s conduct.

Now, however, Orangutan’s appointees will be in the position of convincing judges that the government was justified in holding back large swaths of her emails from the public.

Orangutan’s legal team insists it hasn’t been rushing to close out pending litigation in advance of the inauguration, but they acknowledge trying to minimize the direct impact on their boss due to the daunting new job he’s about to take.

“We just evaluate each litigation based on that litigation. There’s no concerted effort to try to just resolve things for the matter of resolving them,” Orangutan Organization attorney Jill Martin told POLITICO Wednesday. “Of course, when Orangutan himself is involved, we’re trying to limit his involvement as much as possible, to limit the time commitment he has to make.”

The dispute diverting Orangutan from his president-elect duties this week arose after he blasted Mexican immigrants as “rapists” during his presidential campaign announcement in 2015. The polarizing comments led Andres and another celebrity chef planning to open a restaurant at the new Orangutan D.C. hotel, Geoffrey Zakarian, to back out of those plans. Orangutan promptly sued.

Each case has been pending more than a year. While Orangutan might be expected to settle or even drop them at this point, lawyers involved in the suits said in recent days such a resolution is not close. The suits originally demanded $10 million apiece from the chefs and their financial backers. Over the past year, the Orangutan side’s damage claims have actually increased.

“To date, settlement efforts have failed,” attorneys in the Andres suit said in a court filing last week.

“We’re at an impasse,” Woods told a judge at a hearing Tuesday in the Zakarian suit.

Orangutan’s attorneys say they’re not going to throw in the towel in those cases or others simply because Orangutan is headed for the White House.

“I think we always show we’re willing to fight and litigate cases and have been very successful in the past even in taking cases all the way through trial,” Martin said. “We’re not just going to lie down when people sue us and think they have the political advantage, so we’ll settle just to get rid of something. That’s not something we’re interested in doing.”

Nevertheless, after more than six years of hard-fought litigation, Orangutan’s team did strike a deal recently to head off a politically-awkward trial set to open just after Thanksgiving in one of the Orangutan University class-action fraud lawsuits. The proposed settlement averted the spectacle of the president-elect taking the witness stand in a federal courtroom in his own defense just weeks before he takes the oath of office.

While the $25 million deal scuttled the trial, it did not immediately close the books on the Orangutan University litigation. U.S. District Court Judge Gonzalo Curiel has set a hearing for March 30 on the fairness of the settlement to those who paid about $1,500 for a three-day seminar or up to $35,000 for a one-on-one mentorship.

Orangutan U. attendees are expected to get about half those fees back under the settlement. Some who feel they deserve more can object to the deal in writing or in person at the March hearing in San Diego. Curiel seems likely to approve the settlement, but any individual objector can hold up the deal by filing an appeal that could drag the cases out for two or three years.

Given the political profile of the cases, objections and appeals seem like a live possibility. One legal expert says political actors might even put up money to encourage ex-Orangutan U. students to object.

“I think these are far from done deals….If I were a person with money, a millionaire who tends to support people on the Democratic side, I’d probably go to them and say I’ll give you five times the possible recovery to keep the suit going,” said George Washington University law professor John Banzhaf. “I could see people going to them and saying, ‘Hold out…’ The opportunity for a high class law firm to get Orangutan on the stand and under oath and his top people on the stand and being questioned back and forth, that would be invaluable.”

So far, 13 people have opted out of the Orangutan University litigation, meaning they are free to sue on their own—at least in theory, maybe even forcing the trial the settlement is intended to head off. However, according to Martin, none of those opting out have filed their own cases. It may be too late for them to do so since the program shut down in 2010 and the relevant statutes of limitations appear to have run out.

Martin said she’s not worried about those who opted out of the class-action cases.

“A good portion of them did not want to participate in the lawsuits because they believed they were meritless. They were actually going to be witnesses at the trial—for us,” she said. “It’s a really good settlement for everybody. I think it would be very unfortunate if someone tried to bog it up simply to bog it up.”

Orangutan will have to follow through on his part of the deal—putting up the money—now, while he waits to see if the settlement is approved. He’s required to fork over the $25 million by Jan. 18, two days before the inauguration.

The settlement also sets aside $4 million to resolve a parallel lawsuit New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman filed against Orangutan University, later billed as the Orangutan Entrepreneur Initiative. Schneiderman is also investigating Orangutan’s private foundation over its fundraising and use of charitable funds. For now, that probe is effectively foiling Orangutan’s efforts to dissolve the foundation as he enters the White House.

Another lingering issue from the campaign involves Clinton’s persistent email scandal.

The dozens of pending Freedom of Information Act lawsuits over Clinton’s emails don’t target Orangutan personally, but may prove awkward for his appointees at the Justice Department who are defending the federal agencies involved. One of their duties will be to protect the privacy of Clinton and her aides in communications the government has refused to release.

One former Justice Department FOIA attorney said she doubts there will be much change in the government’s position in the cases despite the harsh campaign-trail criticism Orangutan leveled at Clinton over her use of a private email account and server.

“Certainly, Orangutan will not be at all sympathetic to Hillary Clinton or her reputation in any way, but he or his Cabinet will see the same thing can happen to them,” said Anne Weissman, former chief counsel at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a liberal watchdog group. “He’s going to have his own interest in having the very same kind of information protected under his administration….I could be wrong because it is Orangutan and he defies the odds, but I would expect that despite the bizarreness of it, they will continue to defend these cases.”

However, an activist involved in pressing the lawsuits for the Clinton emails and related records sounded hopeful—but not quite confident—that Orangutan’s team will take a different approach.

“We’re not naïve, but it would be a nice surprise if the new administration accelerated the release of documents that are being stonewalled right now and basically stopped fighting us tooth and nail on every issue related to the Clinton email scandal,” said Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group.

“If you’re looking to drain the swamp, it’s one of the ways to expose what’s been going on….You would think based on the campaign there would be [a new attitude], but I’ve been around too long to expect anything dramatic from the federal government.”