Photo: AP

Not usually one to avoid the cameras, Donald Trump is attempting to suppress two videotaped depositions he gave in December and January pertaining to the two class-action lawsuits Trump University is facing in California. The transcripts of the depositions have already been made public, and Trump’s lawyers argue that releasing the video would not only be redundant but would taint the jury pool upon being covered in the media.

This is, as attorney Jason Forge points out in a court filing submitted on Wednesday, a completely absurd claim for a presidential candidate who has spent the better part of a year denigrating both the substantive claims of the complaint as well as the individual class-representatives who have advanced those claims to make.

“Trump is concerned about a poisoned jury pool,” Forge wrote in the filing. “After dedicating months to poisoning that pool with dozens of nationally-publicized speeches denigrating the claims against him and championing his hollow defense, he should be concerned. He knows the best cure for a snake bite comes from the snake’s own venom. After months of spewing venom into the jury pool, Trump is trying to suppress the cure—his own admissions.”

Media organizations including the Washington Post and the New York Times have intervened in the case, arguing that the videos should be released given that Trump is a public figure. In attempting to suppress the video—clips of which would surely turn up in Clinton campaign ads—lawyers have invoked a federal law that allows the prohibition of video depositions’ release “to protect a party or person from annoyance, embarrassment, oppression, or undue burden or expense.”

Given what we already know Trump said in the depositions (and what we can infer from transcript about his behavior in those depositions), it seems likely true that releasing the videos would in fact cause the presumptive Republican nominee both annoyance and embarrassment—to the extent that Trump can even feel such feelings.

Take, for example, this dialogue on the nature of memory:

Asked directly whether he could remember telling NBC’s Katy Tur (only three weeks earlier!) that he had the world’s best memory, Trump testified, “I don’t remember that. I remember you telling me, but I don’t know that I said it.”

Clearly he remembers what he said during the rest of the deposition, though.