"Nobody has respect for women like me!"
by digby
I was wondering when somebody in the press was going to inquire about this case. It seems like it might just be relevant considering that the right wing media is wallowing in ecstasy over Weinstein:
A high-stakes legal showdown is brewing for President Donald Trump, as a woman who said he groped her has subpoenaed all documents from his campaign pertaining to “any woman alleging that Donald J. Trump touched her inappropriately.”
The previously unreported subpoena was issued in March but entered into the court file last month. The White House did not respond to a request for comment, nor did Trump’s attorney.
Summer Zervos, a former contestant on the Trump’s reality TV show The Apprentice, accused Trump of kissing and grabbing her when she went to his bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel in 2007 to discuss a possible job at the Trump Organization. After Zervos made the accusation last October, just weeks before the election, Trump denied her accusation and called it a lie.
She responded by suing him for defamation. As part of that suit, her lawyers served a subpoena on his campaign, asking that it preserve all documents it had about her.
They also asked for “all documents” concerning other women who have accused Trump of groping them, including Jessica Leeds, Mindy McGillivray, Rachel Crooks, Natasha Stoynoff, Temple Taggart, Kristin Anderson, Cathy Heller, Jill Harth, and Jessica Drake. The subpoena seeks “all documents concerning any accusations that were made during Donald J. Trump’s election campaign for president, that he subjected any woman to unwanted sexual touching and/or sexually inappropriate behavior.” Last year, Trump tweeted a blanket denial, saying, “Nothing ever happened with any of these women.”
The subpoena did not make its way into the court file until last month, when Zervos’ attorneys, including the high-profile lawyer Gloria Allred, filed it as part of motion disputing a contention from Trump’s legal team that her subpoena was too broad.
Trump's lawyers have sought to have the suit dismissed or at least delayed until he is out of office. His lawyers argued that he is protected from civil lawsuits in state court while in office. They also made a number of other claims in a July filing, among them that the entire suit is politically motivated and that Allred is using it to dredge up ammunition to impeach him. As for the subpoena, they argued that it is "far reaching" and "seeks wholly irrelevant information intended solely to harass the president."
Last month, Zervos’s attorneys rejected that accusation and provided the subpoena as evidence.
Trump’s response to Zervos’ motion is due Oct. 31, according to Zervos’ attorney, Gloria Allred. In a statement Allred said: “We are hopeful that the court will deny President Trump’s motion to dismiss, so that we may move forward with discovery and obtain relevant documents and testimony.”
One suspects that the Supreme Court ruling which allowed Paula Jones' attorneys to move forward with her suit against Clinton will be found to be a one time deal only applicable to Democrats. That seems to be the way these things work nowadays. Still, the press should at least be asking these questions. Harvey Weinstein is a movie producer who probably no more than 10 percent of the population had ever heard of until the last couple of weeks much less was ever elected to anything. 63 million people knowingly put a man in the White House who is on tape bragging that he did exactly the same thing.
I would have thought it natural to revisit that issue, check up on some of the women who bravely came forward to tell their stories about the man who was about to become the most powerful man in the world. They're wondering about this too:
For all the women who have cheered as accusations against the producer Harvey Weinstein force a public conversation about sexual misconduct, one small group of women has watched with frustration. They are some of the dozen women who publicly accused Donald Trump of groping or kissing them — accusations that Trump has denied.
In a sharp contrast to the women who accused Weinstein, Trump’s accusers did not see the public turn against him, the board of his company fire him, or the police launch an investigation. Instead, these women watched the man they say humiliated and abused them get elected president of the United States.
“When he won, I felt like I lost,” said Melinda McGillivray, a Palm Springs resident who came forward in October of last year to accuse Trump of groping her in 2003. She said she was assisting a photographer at a party at Mar-A-Lago when Trump came up and “grabbed my ass.” The photographer who was with her at the event, a Ray Charles concert, confirmed to the Palm Beach Post that she reported the alleged incident to him at the time.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment on this story. But last year, as women were continuing to come forward, Trump tweeted a blanket denial: “Nothing ever happened with any of these women. Totally made up nonsense to steal the election. Nobody has more respect for women than me!”
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