As busy as Donald Trump is being president, he can’t avoid a former “Apprentice” contestant’s defamation lawsuit where he may be forced to respond under oath to allegations of sexual assault and his treatment of women.
It’s an issue that flared up during the election campaign and while he’s been president. Trump is separately embroiled in a scandal involving a $130,000 payment to an adult film actress — Stormy Daniels — who alleges he’s attempting to prevent her from discussing a sexual relationship she had with him in 2006. Daniels’s interview on “60 Minutes” is scheduled to air March 25.
Summer Zervos, a contender on The Apprentice in 2005, sued Trump in January 2017 in Manhattan state court, alleging he “ambushed” her on more than one occasion starting in 2007, kissing her, touching her breast and pressing his genitals against her.
Trump argued he should be shielded by the U.S. Constitution because it’s too much of a distraction for the nation’s chief executive to face civil claims in state court.
New York State Supreme Court Justice Jennifer Schecter on Tuesday denied the president’s request to throw out the lawsuit or delay it until he leaves office.
“No one is above the law,” Schecter said, citing the Paula Jones case against Bill Clinton that said the president doesn’t have immunity and is subject to the law for “purely private acts.”
“Nothing in the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution even suggests that the president cannot be called to account before a state court for wrongful conduct that bears no relationship to any federal executive responsibility,” Schecter wrote.
That’s just wrong. It’s going to cut into his Fox & Friends/tweeting time.