In February, immigrants and advocates in Massachusetts filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration over its troubling decision to end temporary protected status (TPS) for tens of thousands of Sudanese, Haitian, Salvadoran, and Nicaraguan immigrants.
The plaintiffs, who filed the suit with the help of Centro Presente and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Economic Justice, have staked their case around the argument that the decision to end TPS was motivated by Trump’s racism towards immigrants from these countries. Now, according to the Associated Press, the lawyers are going after footage from The Apprentice that apparently shows Trump using racist slurs:
Lawyers for Civil Rights, which sued Trump in February, has issued subpoenas to MGM Holdings Inc. and Trump Productions LLC demanding any footage shot during the production of the show in which Trump “uses racial and/or ethnic slurs” or “makes remarks concerning race, nationality and/or ethnic background.”
More from the AP:
Lawyers for Civil Rights says in the lawsuit that Trump’s move to rescind the program was rooted in animus against immigrants of color, citing comments he made on the campaign trial and in office.
“Access to these videotapes will help further demonstrate that Defendant Trump holds racially biased views that impact his policy and decision making,” attorney Oren Nimni said. The subpoenas also seek any relevant outtakes, audio clips and transcripts made during production of the show.
Do the tapes exist? In August, Trump said they do not, which is exactly what I would expect someone who is hiding decades-old footage of them being racist to say, after a similar claim arose in Omarosa Manigault Newman’s book:
The good news is that, in October, a federal judge in San Francisco moved to halt the end of TPS, and agreed it was at least partially the result of Trump’s fucked-up attitudes towards immigrants. Which, Apprentice tape or not, is already pretty well documented.