Trump Agrees With Assault Accuser to Unseal Files in Lawsuit
Trump Agrees With Accuser Zervos to Unseal Files in Abuse Suit
(Bloomberg) -- A former reality-TV star who claims Donald Trump forcibly kissed and groped her before he was president reached an agreement with the Trump Organization to unseal nine more pages of documents that she says corroborate her story.
Summer Zervos, a former contestant on Trump’s “Apprentice,” last week asked a New York judge to nullify the president’s assertion of confidentiality over the papers. But on Monday, the parties agreed that Trump will now do so voluntarily.
The president’s lawyers had attempted to keep the pages secret because the documents reveal in “striking detail” the strength of her story, Zervos claimed, including emails in which a meeting between Trump and Zervos was arranged.
Zervos, who met with Trump in hopes of securing a job after her TV appearance in 2005, is one of more than a dozen women who’ve come forward accusing him of sexual misconduct. Trump has denied the claims.
The Trump Organization had argued the pages shouldn’t be made public because they include Trump’s old cell-phone number. Mariann Wang, Zervos’s lawyer, had called that argument “absurd” because Trump no longer uses the number.
Zervos has previously signaled she wants to depose Trump under oath. In her lawsuit, she claims that Trump defamed her in 2016 when he said she lied about their alleged encounters in Trump Tower in New York and a bungalow in Beverly Hills.
A New York appellate court in March ruled Zervos’s case can proceed, rejecting Trump’s argument that the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution bars lawsuits against him while he’s president.
The case is Zervos v. Trump, 150522/2017, New York Supreme Court, New York County.
To contact the reporter on this story: Erik Larson in New York at elarson4@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: David Glovin at dglovin@bloomberg.net, Steve Stroth, Joe Schneider
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