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.
Your support matters…Independent journalism is under threat and overshadowed by heavily funded mainstream media.
You can help level the playing field. Become a member.
Your tax-deductible contribution keeps us digging beneath the headlines to give you thought-provoking, investigative reporting and analysis that unearths what's really happening- without compromise.
Give today to support our courageous, independent journalists.
Opinion
Is it possible to build a political party that truly speaks to the needs of working people in an era of runaway inequality and incessant mass layoffs?
Middle East
Thirty years after Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat shook hands on the White House lawn, it's time to admit the process never had a chance to succeed.
The class war that gave rise to his campaign is the fault of a long line of corporate Democrats like Joe Biden, and voters know it.
America has looked the other way amid a child-rape epidemic in Afghanistan. It's a scandal that speaks volumes about our imperial project.
Democrats convinced that the Vermont senator would lose to Donald Trump vastly underestimate the risk of nominating a so-called moderate.
If Bernie Sanders — miraculously — wins the nomination, Democratic Party elites suddenly will bless Trump as the least worst option.
You need to be a supporter to comment.
There are currently no responses to this article.
Be the first to respond.