Trump may face a reckoning in case brought by female accuser
By Frances Stead Sellers December 4 at 2:17 PM
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As the nation wrestles with a historic shift in how to address old charges of sexual misbehavior, allegations against Trump, which date to his days as a New York developer, have become part of the public debate. Trump has repeatedly said the accusations against him are groundless. But by turning personal and branding the women liars, Trump has perhaps unwittingly played into a cutting-edge strategy in the legal pursuit of sexual misconduct — claims of defamation such as those used against comedian Bill Cosby and in a lesser-known New York case, argued by two lawyers who are now representing Zervos.
The defamation suit filed in January in the New York State Supreme Court by Zervos, a short-lived contestant on “The Apprentice,” has reached a critical point, with oral arguments over Trump’s motion to dismiss scheduled for Tuesday, after which the judge is expected to rule on whether the case may move forward.
If it proceeds, Zervos’s attorneys could gather and make public incidents from Trump’s past and Trump could be called to testify, with the unwelcome specter of a former president looming over him: It was Bill Clinton’s misleading sworn testimony — not the repeated allegations of sexual harassment against him — that eventually led to his impeachment.
“It’s almost a train you can’t stop going down the tracks,” said Joseph Cammarata, who represented Paula Jones against Clinton and, more recently, represented seven Cosby accusers in a defamation suit. “It opens him up to have to answer questions about sexual relations, other relationships, what might have been said, to open up your whole life.”
The use of defamation to litigate an underlying allegation of sexual misconduct addresses other challenges: Often, the statute of limitations is up before accusations come to light; in some instances, the he-said, she-said nature of the testimony makes accusations hard to prove.
“An allegation of defamation against somebody who can seem flamboyantly reckless with the truth may have a higher probability of sticking,” said Naomi Mezey, a law professor at Georgetown University. “Some women feel equally injured and sometimes more outraged by being publicly attacked and called liars for doing what they feel was very brave and in some respects a public service.”
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-may-face-a-reckoning-in-case-brought-by-female-accuser/2017/12/04/dd8f783a-d39b-11e7-b62d-d9345ced896d_story.html
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