Last night, a federal judge in NY rejected an effort by Trump, his company, and his family to force a fraud lawsuit re: their involvement with a multilevel marketing company into arbitration, a largely non-public, privately-operated justice system https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/6834130/4-8-20-Doe-v-Trump-Opinion.pdf

Trump (pre-presidency) and his kids endorsed multilevel marketing co. ACN as a good investment, but the plaintiffs are alleging that a) it was, in fact, a bad investment, b) that Trump et al. knew/should have known that, and c) no one disclosed that the Trumps were being paid

The plaintiffs signed arbitration agreements with ACN, but not the Trumps (recall the claim that the plaintiffs didn't know ACN was in business with the Trumps). The Trumps argued they should still be able to invoke that agreement. The judge ruled last night that they could not.

What does this mean? It means these claims will proceed in court, where things are generally public.

I wrote last year about the ACN case and, more broadly, about Trump's efforts over the years to force certain lawsuits out of court and into arbitration: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/zoetillman/donald-trump-lawsuits-secret-arbitration