Tell us, Trump
Sex accuser subpoenas campaign for info
A WOMAN who said President Trump groped her a decade ago has subpoenaed all documents from his campaign about every woman who has accused him of sexually inappropriate behavior.
Summer Zervos, a former contestant on “The Apprentice,” filed the subpoena in March as part of her defamation suit against Trump for saying she and other accusers were lying. The subpoena did not appear in court files until last month, and BuzzFeed News first reported on its filing.
Zervos’ attorneys ordered Trump’s presidential campaign to turn over “all documents” relating to Zervos and nearly a dozen other women who have accused Trump of unwanted sexual advances and touching. Some of the women first spoke out in the final weeks of the presidential campaign last year, after a leaked “Access Hollywood” tape from 2005 showed Trump bragging about grabbing women’s genitals.
The subpoena also asks for all campaign documents related to the tape and to Trump’s many subsequent denials of the accusations that followed.
In tweets and public statements last October, Trump said all of the women were pushing “false allegations and outright lies” to help elect his Democratic challenger, Hillary Clinton. He also suggested some of the women were not attractive enough for him to target. “All of these liars will be sued after the election is over,” he said at a Gettysburg, Pa., rally weeks before the November election.
Those suits have not been filed. Trump’s attorneys have been trying to get Zervos’ suit dismissed or delayed until he is out of office. They also tried to shoot down the subpoena, calling it too “far-reaching” and saying it targeted “wholly irrelevant information intended solely to harass the President.”
Trump’s legal team must respond to the subpoena by Oct. 31. The President and the White House did not comment on the filing.
Zervos, 42, has accused Trump of kissing and grabbing her in a Beverly Hills hotel in 2007 while they discussed a possible position for her at the Trump Organization. Her legal team includes famed women’s rights lawyer Gloria Allred, who is representing several women in the Bill Cosby sex scandal.
Trump, 71, has been mired in legal battles from the moment he took office, including Zervos’ suit and a federal investigation into his campaign’s possible collusion with Russia to meddle in the 2016 race.
Federal Election Commission reports filed Sunday reveal Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign spent more than $1 million in legal fees between July and September. That’s in addition to nearly $430,000 the Republican National Committee paid in August on behalf of Trump and his son Donald Trump Jr., 39.