Not even Donald Trump's lawyer thinks it's a good idea to seek recusal of Gonzalo Curiel, the federal judge presiding over a pair of class action lawsuits alleging fraud by the for-profit Trump University.
At least, that would be our interpretation of his dismissive head shake, shoulder shrug and clear statement last month that the judge is just "doing his job."
For his part, Trump doubled down in his attacks against Curiel, whom the soon-to-be Republican presidential nominee has racially profiled and branded as a "hater" and "hostile" in the ongoing case.
“I’m building a wall. It’s an inherent conflict of interest” for Curiel, Trump said last week in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. It was his most deplorable comment yet about the judge, who is an American of Mexican descent. (Tuesday's non-apology doesn't help much.)
But when asked about Curiel's performance on May 6 -- before Trump had singled out the judge as a whipping boy at his rallies -- the chief lawyer hired to defend the businessman was unequivocal in his response.
“The judge is doing his job,” said Daniel Petrocelli, according to Yahoo! News. “We’re not seeking to recuse the judge," the very experienced trial attorney added.
By law and under ethics rules, federal judges must step aside from cases where their impartiality might be reasonably questioned -- "reasonably" being the key concept here.
But hardly anything Trump argues is reasonable. Trump's charge that Curiel has "an absolute conflict" in the case given his ethnic heritage has already drawn scorn from nearly every corner of the legal commentariat. Petrocelli's May 6 comments, which garnered no national attention at the time, should put a dagger through the spurious claim.
More importantly, the lawyer's remarks suggest that he knows better than to pursue a frivolous recusal motion. As Reuters' Alison Frankel notes, a motion for recusal based on Trump's phony reasoning could cost Petrocelli and the rest of his legal team sanctions or other professional consequences that they couldn't easily shake off or appeal.
“Courts have repeatedly held that matters such as race or ethnicity are improper bases for challenging a judge's impartiality,” wrote a federal appeals court in 1998. The two lawyers in that case got in trouble for seeking removal of a judge who they claimed was prejudiced because he is Asian American.
Petrocelli surely knows this is a dangerous game, which may explain why in May, he brushed aside any notion of bias and zeroed in on the substance of Curiel's decision on when the Trump U. trial would take place.
"I think the court today did a good job of trying to balance out the competing interests," the lawyer said. "He made the decision. We would prefer to do a trial later in time. And he set it for November 28."
So the Trump U. trial is set for after the presidential election -- when many hope that Trump will have returned to his day job of making deals and having to answer for them in courtrooms across the nation.
Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S.