For First Time as President, Trump to Answer Questions Under Oath
Summer Zervos is about to achieve what Robert Mueller, Michael Avenatti and Stormy Daniels have so far failed to do.
Summer Zervos leaves a New York court in December 2017 after a hearing in her defamation case against Donald Trump. (Kathy Willens / AP)
Summer Zervos is about to achieve what Robert Mueller, Michael Avenatti and Stormy Daniels have so far failed to do: force President Trump to answer questions under oath.
Zervos, a contestant on Trump’s former TV show “The Apprentice,” is suing him for defamation. She says that Trump, while on the campaign trail in 2016, falsely accused her and other women of being liars. Responding to Zervos’ charge that he sexually assaulted her at a Beverly Hills, Calif., hotel in 2007, Trump told an audience at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania that the allegation was a “total fabrication” designed to get her and his other accusers “10 minutes of fame.”
In New York on Friday, Law & Crime reports, attorneys in the civil case agreed to exchange written answers to each side’s questions and objections by Sept. 28. These answers must be provided under oath, so Trump will have tell the truth or face a possible perjury charge.
As Truthdig’s Ear to the Ground noted in June, Trump’s legal peril here is significant. It was a lie by President Bill Clinton in sworn testimony in the Monica Lewinsky scandal that tripped him up, resulting in a perjury charge that ultimately led to his impeachment in 1998.
Beyond the Zervos case, legal maneuverings continued Friday in the two highest-profile cases involving Trump:
• In the Mueller probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election, Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani told The Associated Press that the president would not submit to questioning about potential obstruction of justice.
• In the Stormy Daniels case, a company created by Trump’s former attorney, Michael Cohen, asked a Los Angeles court to void a “hush money” agreement made shortly before the election over her alleged affair with Trump. Daniels’ attorney, Michael Avenatti, called the move an attempt to protect Trump from being deposed in the case.
Only the Zervos case is likely to see the president sworn to tell the truth before the midterm elections. Fall is in the air, but Summer is still coming for Donald Trump.
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