‘The President… is not above the law’

A New York court rules that the Constitution does not shield President Trump from allegations of misconduct before he took office. The case has echoes of Paula Jones’s suit against President Clinton.

A New York appeals court on Thursday ruled that Mr. Trump, like Mr. Clinton before him, is not protected by the presidency from answering civil charges. The five-judge panel in Manhattan said that the Constitution’s supremacy clause does not bar state courts from hearing claims over “alleged unofficial misconduct” — that is, claims of improper or illegal action before a president took office. The decision expands on the precedent set in Clinton v. Jones, in which a unanimous Supreme Court in 1997 ruled that a federal court had jurisdiction over a sexual harassment lawsuit filed by Paula Jones, a former low-level Arkansas state employee, against Mr. Clinton.

Yes, the presidency is important and its occupant may have important duties to attend to other than to produce documents or sit for depositions in a civil suit alleging sexual misconduct and defamation, the court explained, but “the President is still a person, and he is not above the law.”

Two judges dissented, observing that the threat of contempt, should Mr. Trump resist the legal process, would put a state court in “direct control” over the president.

A former contestant on Mr. Trump’s reality TV show “The Apprentice,” Ms. Zervos went public during the 2016 campaign with accusations that Mr. Trump kissed and groped her without her consent. She is suing the president for defaming her shortly after she came forward, calling her charges a “hoax.” She filed her suit days before Mr. Trump took the oath of office.

The president’s legal team has vigorously opposed Ms. Zervos’s lawsuit and a separate legal action by the New York attorney general involving Mr. Trump’s

foundation. In both cases, judges have rejected the argument that the presidency insulates Mr. Trump from the reach of state courts hearing cases unrelated to his official duties.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers said they would appeal the ruling in the Zervos matter.

If past is prologue, these lawsuits could be a minefield for Mr. Trump, who so far has avoided, on his lawyers’ advice, a face-to-face interview with the special counsel, Robert Mueller — in no small part because of the president’s tenuous relation- ship with the truth.

After the Supreme Court ruled for Ms. Jones in 1997, President Clinton, like a regular citizen, was questioned under oath by her lawyers, and in the process denied that he had ever had a sexual encounter with a White House intern, Monica Lewinsky. The rest, as they say, is history.

George Conway, husband of the White House adviser Kellyanne Conway, played a not insignificant role, both publicly and behind the scenes, in getting the public and the justice system to accept the premise that Mr. Clinton — or any other president, for that matter — shouldn’t be beyond the reach of the courts. Mr. Conway, who was one of the lawyers who represented Ms. Jones in her suit against the president, was among a cadre of conservatives who used a variety of means — including the courts — to hound the Clintons. He was part of what Hillary Clinton termed at the time a “vast right-wing conspiracy.”

On Thursday, after learning of the New York ruling, Mr. Conway took a victory lap of sorts. He shared on Twitter a Supreme Court brief he helped ghostwrite in the Jones case. “I stand by these arguments, as applied to any president, of any party,” he wrote.