On a day when Donald Trump Jr. is wife lingerie sex videostweeting out emails with a Russian lawyer offering damaging material on Hillary Clinton, it's worth revisiting a lawsuit haunting another member of the Trump family—and the lessons it contains.
Last Friday, President Donald Trump's legal team formally requested that a New York judge halt a libel suit filed against him in January. And as has been reported already, one justification for the move is the case of Clinton v Jones—the very lawsuit that led to then-President Clinton's impeachment.
SEE ALSO: Trump is getting crushed at his own handshake gameDonald Trump is no stranger to lawsuits, having been involved in thousands of them, but the Clinton case highlights the dangers inherent in sprawling inquiries that can compel testimony under oath.
The lawsuit in question was brought by Summer Zervos, a former contestant on The Apprentice, who accused Trump of multiple counts of sexual assault in 2007. Zervos was one of over a dozen different women who came forward with such accusations in the fall of 2016 following the Washington Post's report on the infamous Access Hollywoodtape.
But Zervos' suit is noteworthy for not only how Trump and his legal team are trying to dodge it but because of how Zervos has framed it.
Suing the president-elect
In the suit [PDF], filed in January, Zevos claimed, "Mr. Trump suddenly, and without her consent, kissed her on her mouth repeatedly; he touched her breast; and he pressed his genitals up against her."
But Zervos' lawsuit isn't about the alleged assault but rather about Trump's mean-spirited denials; it's a defamation suit that accuses Trump of willing and knowingly lying about the accusations brought by Zervos and others and that these women "would be subjected to threats of violence, economic harm, and reputational damage."
Zervos has only asked for $3,000 in damages while she and her attorney, Gloria Allred, have insisted they would dismiss the suit if Trump were to retract his denials and admit to the assault.
Trump plays the Bill Clinton card
Trump's legal team say he's immune from lawsuits while in office and have presented the Clinton v Jonescase as supporting evidence.
Given how much Trump mentioned Bill Clinton's exploits during the 2016 campaign -- he even held a press conference featuring Clinton's accusers before one of the 2016 presidential debates -- it's a bit surprising that Trump is actually using one of those cases against Clinton as a means to defend himself. Or perhaps it isn't, as ideological consistency has never been a Trump hallmark.
On it's face, the ruling doesn't help Trump all that much. In Clinton v Jones, the U.S. Supreme Court voted unanimously to allow the sexual harassment lawsuit brought against Clinton in 1994 by Paula Jones to continue. The precedent was set that sitting president was notimmune from civil lawsuits that did not relate to official acts as president (Jones allegations were from a 1991 incident before Clinton was elected president).
But Trump's legal team isn't using what that case decided to prove their point; it's using what it didn'tsettle. They pointed out in a filing made last week, as they have in previous filings, that Clinton v Jonesonly resolved presidential immunity in federal cases but not cases in state courts -- Zervos' suit was filed in New York -- and that the Supreme Court would need to rule on that before any such lawsuit could proceed.
It should be noted that there are other reasons Trump's team asserts in the filings that the lawsuit should be dropped, including that Trump's statements were only opinion and thereby not defamatory and that most of his statements didn't mention Zervos by name.
Zervos' attorney, the aforementioned Allred, has said that Clinton v Jones, in fact, "determined unanimously that no man is above the law and that includes the President of the United States."
Waiting on the next chapter
The case is still going through the motions, figuratively and literally, as both sides continue to make all these procedural filings in the New York Supreme Court.
Some have suggested that this case will, ultimately, wind up at the U.S. Supreme Court, where the justices will finally have to rule on state courts oversight from Clinton v Jones.
In the meantime, Trump's team has made sure that the process moves slowly, having already asked for one 60-day delay because of "the importance of the threshold constitutional issue and the President and his staff’s exceptionally busy schedule."
As for Clinton v Jones, the case was allowed to proceed and ultimately Kenneth Starr received permission to "expand his inquiry to investigate the possibility of subornation of perjury and obstruction of justice in the Jones case," according to the Washington Post. Sound familiar?
The two sides settled out of court in November 1998, during Clinton's second term. Jones received $850,000 and Clinton did not admit any wrongdoing.
One month later, the impeachment process against Clinton got underway.
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