Lawyers for the plaintiffs, who are listed in the lawsuit with names like Jane Doe and Richard Roe, said in court papers that their clients feared retaliation if their names became public. The lawyers cited Trump’s “history of wielding his wealth, stature and Twitter account to attack people whom he perceives to be his enemies,” including people who sue him.
On Thursday, Judge Lorna G. Schofield of U.S. District Court in Manhattan agreed with them, ruling that the plaintiffs could keep their names concealed for now, as their lawsuit moved forward.
“The manner in which the president has used his position and platform to affect the course of pending court cases,” Schofield said, “is really without precedent.”
“Whether instigated by him or by his supporters,” she added, “the harms at issue here are not hypothetical. They are real, significant and present an unwarranted obstacle to those who would seek to vindicate their rights in federal court.”
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The four plaintiffs have been described in court papers as a hospice worker, a self-employed formerly homeless man, a food delivery driver and a mother of three who works at a national retail store. Each invested in ACN, a telecommunications marketing company, after watching promotional videos featuring Trump, the suit said. The company paid Trump millions to endorse its products.
The lawsuit, which seeks class-action status, alleged ACN was one of several get-rich-quick schemes that Trump promoted as legitimate business opportunities “to enrich themselves by systematically defrauding economically marginalized people.”
The suit, filed in late October just days before the midterm elections, was underwritten by a nonprofit, the Tesseract Research Center, whose chairman has donated to Democratic candidates. The center is funding the lawsuit by paying attorneys’ fees and costs, the plaintiff’s lawyers have said. The suit also names as defendants three of Trump’s children — Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump and Eric Trump.
Schofield said her ruling would allow the plaintiffs to proceed confidentially until she ruled on a defense motion to dismiss the lawsuit, which could be months away. She said the plaintiffs could renew their request at that time.
A plaintiff’s lawyer, Roberta A. Kaplan, said, “We are pleased that the court, recognizing the reasonableness of our clients’ fears of reprisal by defendants and their supporters, has permitted the plaintiffs to proceed under pseudonyms for the time being.”
A lawyer for the defendants did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday. After the suit was filed, a lawyer for the Trump Organization called the allegations completely meritless and said the suit was “just another effort by opponents of the president to use the court system to advance a political agenda.”
In court papers filed recently, lawyers for the defendants denied that identifying the plaintiffs would pose a risk of retaliation to them, and said it was “inherently unfair” to allow them to proceed anonymously.
“Mr. Trump is, after all, the sitting president of the United States,” the lawyers wrote, “and when such scurrilous allegations are made against him in a publicly filed lawsuit, the public has a profound interest in knowing who is making the allegations, so that it can assess the accuracy of what is being alleged and inform itself as to the credibility of the accuser.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.