Judge bars discovery about other Trump harassment accusers in 'Apprentice' contestant's suit
President Donald Trump/Shutterstock.com
A state judge in New York City on Friday refused to allow former The Apprentice contestant Summer Zervos to obtain information about other women who have accused President Donald Trump of inappropriate sexual conduct.
Judge Jennifer Schecter ruled the evidence was not relevant to Zervos’ defamation suit against Trump, report the New York Times, Courthouse News Service, the Guardian, the New York Law Journal and Bloomberg News. Zervos alleges Trump defamed her by denying her allegations of unwanted kissing and groping.
Schecter said Zervos is seeking “inadmissible evidence of propensity.”
Schecter did, however, rule that Trump will have to turn over internal documents about how he should respond to any woman’s public statements about inappropriate behavior, according to the Times account. And he will have to disclose people who handled such accusations for him.
Trump also will have to turn over records showing where he was during the period when the alleged unwanted contact in Zervos’ case took place.
Zervos alleges Trump kissed her twice on the lips during a 2007 meeting at his office and kissed and groped her the next time she saw him at a Beverly Hills hotel, where she had gone to join him for dinner. Zervos says she had met with Trump because she hoped he could help her with job opportunities.
Zervos made her accusations in 2016 after public release of Trump’s statements to an Access Hollywood reporter about groping and kissing women.
Schecter ruled in March that Trump must face Zervos’ lawsuit. Lawyers for Trump had argued the president is immune from state court lawsuits. They argued the Supreme Court’s 1997 decision in Clinton v. Jones, which allowed a civil harassment suit against President Bill Clinton to proceed, applied only to federal suits.
A New York appeals court is considering an appeal of that ruling.
