The Trump accuser who refuses to go away
By Frances Stead Sellers February 13 at 3:14 PM
HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif. — As President Trump questions whether men accused of sexual misconduct are being denied “due process,” a restaurant owner here is awaiting word on whether her own legal claim against Trump will be allowed to move forward.
Summer Zervos filed a defamation lawsuit a year ago in which she claims that Trump groped and sexually assaulted her. He called Zervos and other female accusers “liars.” Trump’s lawyers have fought to keep the case from going to trial, dismissing it as “totally meritless” and arguing that a state court has no jurisdiction over a sitting president. A New York judge is expected to rule any day on whether it should proceed.
Zervos, a former contestant on Trump’s reality TV show “The Apprentice,” is the only one of about a dozen women who accused Trump of sexual misconduct shortly before the 2016 presidential election to have brought legal action. Her complaint details phone calls and meetings that could be used to verify — or refute — her allegations, and her attorneys could call other accusers to the stand to describe Trump’s behavior. Zervos declined to be interviewed.
Trump has denied Zervos’s account of an alleged December 2007 encounter at the Beverly Hills Hotel. “To be clear, I never met her at a hotel or greeted her inappropriately a decade ago,” he said after she made her accusation.
The White House referred questions about Trump’s whereabouts at the time to his private lawyer Marc Kasowitz, who did not respond to a request for comment. He has previously dismissed the claim as politically motivated.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/the-trump-accuser-who-refuses-to-go-away/2018/02/13/3b62f02c-f6ce-11e7-a9e3-ab18ce41436a_story.html
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