Trump ordered to expand document search in suit alleging he endorsed pyramid scam

President Trump and three of his adult children have been ordered by a federal judge to search through 15 years of business records for materials that could inform a lawsuit alleging they profited by promoting a marketing scam targeting vulnerable investors.

Trump is being sued by four people who say they were duped into joining the multilevel marketing company ACN years ago because of his endorsement. The suit characterizes ACN as a pyramid scheme and accuses Trump of having made misleading claims as a paid pitchman prior to his presidency. All four say they suffered financially as a result.

The order on Friday by U.S. District Court Judge Lorna Schofield allows the plaintiffs to look further into the Trump Organization’s history — to 2005 — for others who may have been involved in the president’s deal with ACN.

The suit, filed in Manhattan federal court, dates to October 2018. Racketeering claims were dismissed but state-level fraud charges were allowed to proceed and the document-production process known as discovery is well underway. That could turn up names of people at the president’s family-run real estate company and other entities under its control whom the plaintiffs could seek to depose.

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