NEW YORK — Former President Donald Trump will be questioned under oath on June 16 in a class-action lawsuit over his years-long promotion of a troubled multi-level marketing company that sold desktop video phones.
Trump, who failed to get the 2018 case dismissed, agreed to the deposition date after negotiations with lawyers for four investors who claim he duped them into paying thousands of dollars to become independent sellers with ACN Opportunity LLC, according to a filing Friday in Manhattan federal court.
ACN’s video phone was touted by Trump on “The Apprentice,” and he also appeared in promotional videos that promised people could make easy money selling it “without any of the risks most entrepreneurs have to take.” He was paid almost $9 million by ACN between 2005 and 2015.
Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, who were also involved in the promotions of ACN, agreed to be deposed on May 10 and May 12, respectively. A date for Ivanka Trump’s deposition hasn’t been set, according to the filing. A judge had set a June 29 deadline for the depositions to be completed.
“We look forward to taking their depositions,” plaintiffs’ attorney Robert Kaplan said in a statement. Kaplan is also representing New York advice columnist E. Jean Carroll in a defamation suit against Trump.
The Trumps’ lawyers didn’t immediately respond to a message seeking comment on the depositions. Trump previously said the suit was politically motivated and that his praise of the video phones was “puffery” that no “reasonable investor” would have relied upon.
The ACN phone was rendered obsolete by the advent of smartphones. The plaintiffs claim the Trumps lied about their faith in ACN’s products and also failed to disclose they were being paid to promote the company.
The Trumps, under a court order to produce evidence to the plaintiffs, earlier this month handed over “certain videos and photographs relating to ACN,” according to the filing. A lawyer for Trump told the plaintiffs that the Trump Organization had “no policies or procedures” for due diligence regarding ACN, the filing said.
ACN recruits paid hundreds of dollars to join and hundreds more to attend seminars and national conventions at sold-out arenas. Trump starred in promotional videos, appeared in-person at events and twice hosted ACN executives on “The Celebrity Apprentice.”
He told recruits that the “tremendous” phones, which required ACN internet service to work, were doing “half-a-billion dollars’ worth of sales a year,” and that ACN was “at the forefront of innovation,” according to the complaint. The plaintiffs argue those claims were “abjectly false.”
