Former Playboy Bunny Challenges Trump Relationship Agreement
A former Playboy model who claims to have had an affair with President Donald Trump filed a lawsuit in California on Tuesday to free herself from a legal settlement that forces her to remain silent.
Karen McDougal is the second woman this month to challenge an agreement to keep quiet about an alleged extramarital affair with Trump.
McDougal filed the lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court against American Media Inc, publisher of National Enquirer magazine, which paid him $ 150,000 in 2016 to remain silent on the matter, according to a copy of the lawsuit filed by his attorney, Peter. Stris.
The lawsuit comes a month after the New Yorker reported the alleged affair and an action by American Media Inc. to pay McDougal the exclusive rights to her story, which she never published.
The New Yorker article noted that American Media chief David Pecker described Trump as a "personal friend."
American Media Inc has not yet immediately responded to a request for comment, Reuters reported.
"AMI lied to me, made empty promises, and repeatedly intimidated and manipulated me. I just want the opportunity to set the record straight and move on with my life, free of this company, its executives, and its attorneys," he said in a statement. McDougal, who was Playboy magazine's Playmate of the Year in 1998.
Report on lie detector test appears
In another case involving the president, NBC News reports that it has in its possession a lie detector test report of adult film actress Stormy Daniels, who also claims to have had an extramarital affair with Trump in 2006.
Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, sued Trump on March 6, claiming that the now US president never signed a silent agreement on an "intimate" extramarital affair between them, for which she received $ 130,000. .
NBC News reports that Daniels underwent the polygraph test in 2011 at the request of a magazine that had interviewed the actress about her relationship with the mogul. InTouch magazine interviewed Daniels but never published the content. InTouch's sister publication Life & Style magazine called for the lie detector test.
The network claims to have a copy of the test report, which it says shows more than a 99% probability that the woman was telling the truth by claiming that she had unprotected intimate relationships with Trump.
The polygraph report was prepared by Western Security Consultants, a Las Vegas company, the information said.
Clifford reportedly responded to a series of questions, three of which related to the alleged affair with Trump: Was she intimate with him, was she in unprotected relationships, and was Trump offered to participate in the television show The Apprentice , of which he was the protagonist and executive producer.
The copy of the report in the hands of NBC News indicates that Clifford answered "yes" to all three questions. The examiner would have used two types of analysis to determine whether the actress was telling the truth, and her conclusion was that there was "adequate evidence" that the woman was telling the truth in the first two questions and that the third answer was "inconclusive."
NBC News also has an affidavit from the examiner, signed on Monday, March 19, 2018. The details of the polygraph exam were originally reported by the Wall Street Journal.
Along with the news, NBC News published a photograph of Stephany Clifford, allegedly during the lie detector test. The actress's attorney, Michael Avenetti confirmed that the photo is from a video taken during the polygraph test.
The White House and President Trump's attorney, Michael Cohen, have denied that the president had an intimate relationship with Clifford. Trump has also denied the alleged affair with McDougal.
Trump prosecutor wins defamation trial ruling
In a third court case against President Donald Trump, a New York judge accepted Tuesday that the president must face a defamation lawsuit brought by a woman who accuses him of sexually harassing her after she appeared on the now-defunct television show. The Apprentice.
Hmmmmm........#basta #searchforthetruth #whosenext? #buckle-up pic.twitter.com/frvAmT7MBf
— Michael Avenatti (@MichaelAvenatti) March 20, 2018
The decision of Manhattan Judge Jennifer Schecter in favor of Californian Summer Zervos, a former contestant on The Apprentice, suggests that Trump may have to answer embarrassing questions in court about his behavior with women.
Shecter rejected Trump's defense that he has immunity from prosecution as president, saying he "found absolutely no authority" to dismiss litigation related "purely to unofficial conduct" solely because he is in the White House.
"No one is above the law" wrote the judge.
Zervos, who competed on The Apprentice in 2005 when she met Trump, says he tried to kiss her against her will in her office in 2007 and then groped her in a Beverly Hills hotel during a meeting about a possible job.
Trump has been accused by more than a dozen women of sexual harassment, and he has denied all accusations. During the election campaign, a video was revealed by the entertainment program Access Hollywood in which he is heard speaking in vulgar terms about how when he is famous, women allow themselves to be touched or accept to have sexual relations.
Trump said at the time that it was only about "gym talks between men", and in his campaign presentations and on Twitter he said that the accusations of women against him were "lies." Regarding Zervos, he said her accusation was "a hoax."
The woman, who in her lawsuit asks for damages and an apology, has accused Trump of defamation for calling her a liar and says this has kept the public away from her restaurant.
In the ruling on the Zervos case, Judge Schecter cited a 1997 Supreme Court legal precedent that allowed former Arkansas state employee Paula Jones to proceed with a sexual harassment lawsuit against then-President Bill Clinton. That case paved the way for impeachment in Clinton's Congress the following year.
Trump's attorneys argued that the Jones ruling applies only to federal courts and that the mogul's remarks during the campaign are political speech protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution.
But the judge responded that any listener, acknowledging that Trump knew "exactly what happened", could reasonably believe based on her statements that Zervos was "despicable" because he had "invented" events for personal gain.
"In context, the defendant's repeated statements ... cannot be characterized simply as opinion, heated rhetoric, or hyperbole," Schecter said.
The White House has not yet commented on the ruling, but Mariann Wang, one of Zervos's attorneys said in a statement that they are "grateful for the opportunity to show that the plaintiff falsely characterized Ms. Zervos as false for telling the truth about this unwanted sexual groping. "
