In a hearing Tuesday in Manhattan, Judge Jennifer Schecter set deadlines for discovery, saying that all party depositions should be completed by Jan. 31, 2019. All non-party depositions are due the following month.
The defamation lawsuit brought against Trump by Summer Zervos is moving into an important stage. Zervos filed papers with the court asking the court to compel Trump to answer questions about other women who made similar accusations. Zervos filed the papers yesterday, but nobody seemed to notice.
In court documents filed Tuesday, Zervos and her legal team requested pre-trial evidence from the dozen other women who've reported similar accounts of sexual misconduct by Trump as well as "any other women who have made such complaints to or about" Trump, either privately or publicly.
The information is relevant to proving Trump "made his defamatory statements with common-law malice" and that he acted with "actual malice," according to the lawsuit.
Since Trump "insisted unequivocally that he had never inappropriately touched any woman," information on his other accusers would be "directly relevant" to see "whether his statements about Ms. Zervos were substantially true as a whole," the court documents state.
In addition, the information requested is "potentially relevant" because "of the distinct patterns of behavior that have emerged," such as "luring women to the Beverly Hills Hotel under false pretenses" and "groping women in the precise manner described the 'Access Hollywood' tape," according to the lawsuit.
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The article says that, unless a higher court intervenes, Trump will have to answer questions in the lawsuit.
In a lengthy decision of great significance, a New York appeals court has affirmed a decision that President Donald Trump must face a defamation lawsuit brought by season-five Apprentice contestant Summer Zervos.
More...The opinion (read in full here) also addresses Clinton v. Jones, a 1997 U.S. Supreme Court opinion, which determined that presidents aren't immune from civil actions in federal court.
" Congress has not passed any law immunizing the President from state court damages lawsuits since Clinton v Jones was decided," writes Renwick. "Therefore, because Clinton v Jones held that a federal court has jurisdiction over the kind of claim plaintiff now asserts and because there is no federal law limiting a state court from entertaining similar claims, it follows that state courts have concurrent jurisdiction with federal courts over actions against the President based on his purely unofficial acts."
Testifying in a deposition is how Bill Clinton got in trouble. I'm going to go not very far out on a limb and predict that Trump will not be deposed.With Schecter's ruling, Trump and the contestant Zervos' camps face a Jan. 31 deadline for the president to participate in a deposition. That means Trump could be forced to testify in court by the end of January. Trump's attorneys have indicated they plan to seek other legal avenues to further delay his deposition in the case.
Zervos accused Trump of sexually assaulting her at Beverly Hills Hotel in 2007. Trump denied assaulting Zervos, and she sued him for defamation in January 2017, claiming he called her a liar when she disclosed her accusations while he was making his 2016 presidential bid.
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Trump has already said he never met her in his life. His "DNA" could not possibly be on her dress. If she gets his "DNA," how do we know she won't give it to a hostile foreign power so that they can clone him and have a Trump on their own to lead them against us?NEW YORK (AP) — Lawyers for a woman who accuses President Donald Trump of raping her in the 1990s are asking for a DNA sample, seeking to determine whether his genetic material is on a dress she says she wore during the encounter.
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