Potent legal claims throw Trump on the defensive by Jennifer Rubin

My guess is that Trump will settle in this case. Just a feeling.



Potent legal claims throw Trump on the defensive



https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2018/03/21/potent-legal-claims-throw-president-trump-on-the-defensive/?utm_term=.95fc9aa2c315
by Jennifer Rubin March 21 at 10:00 AM Email the author




1:08
Former ‘Apprentice’ contestant files defamation lawsuit against Trump

Summer Zervos, a former contestant on “The Apprentice,” said on Jan. 17, 2017, that she had filed a defamation lawsuit against Donald Trump. (Reuters)

“No one is above the law.” That admonition came from neither the special counsel nor a member of Congress. It did not come in the context of impeachment, or of potential criminal liability. Rather, it was the opening line of a court’s analysis from its ruling on a civil defamation suit brought by Summer Zervos.

The Post reports:

A New York judge said Tuesday that a defamation lawsuit against President Trump related to an allegation that he sexually harassed a former “Apprentice” contestant may go forward.

Summer Zervos filed the suit last year after Trump said publicly that she and other women making similar claims made them up. Trump sought to block the legal action, but New York Supreme Court Judge Jennifer G. Schecter, citing court precedent that led to the impeachment of President Bill Clinton in 1998, said that “a sitting president is not immune from being sued in federal court for unofficial acts.”

The court wrote: “In holding that the doctrine of separation of powers did not mandate a stay of all private actions against the President, the Court [in the Paula Jones case] flatly rejected that ‘interactions between the Judicial Branch and the Executive, even quite burdensome interactions, necessarily rise to the level of constitutionally forbidden impairment of the Executive’s ability to perform its constitutionally mandated functions.”


While the Jones case was in federal court, the court that heard Zervos’s suit found, “The rule is no different for suits commenced in state court related to the President’s unofficial conduct. ...............................

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Moreover, the court in the Zervos case strongly hinted that this claim not only survives a motion to dismiss but also is a factual matter that only a trier of fact can decide:

Defendant — the only person other than plaintiff who knows what happened between the two of them — repeatedly accused plaintiff of dishonesty not just in his opinion but as a matter of fact. He not only averred that plaintiff told “phony stories” and issued statements that were “totally false” and “fiction,” he insisted that the events “never happened” and that the allegations were “100% false [and] made up.” A reader or listener, cognizant that defendant knows exactly what transpired, could reasonably believe what defendant’s statements convey: that plaintiff is contemptible because she “fabricated” events for personal gain.

In other words, Trump will likely need to sit for a deposition, during which he will no doubt be asked about all his alleged affairs — or will be compelled to settle the case for a pretty penny, given Zervos’s exceptional leverage.............................................