- Click to share on Facebook (Opens in a new window)
- Click to share on Twitter (Opens in a new window)
- Click here to share on LinkedIn (Opens in a new window)
- Click to email a friend (Opens in a new window)
(CNN) - Summer Zervos, the former “The Apprentice” contestant who accused Donald Trump of sexually assaulting her in 2007, presented evidence on Thursday in a new court filing to support his claims.
Zervos contacted lawyers about the charges in 2011 and called Fox News about the matter in August 2015, according to a new presentation by his lawyers.
The owner of a California-based restaurant, which is Republican, is suing Trump for defamation after essentially calling her a liar after her public statement in October 2016 about the alleged assault.
"The fact that the plaintiff sought legal advice in 2011 and spoke about this to others, including a news organization, years before the 2016 events in this case, strongly supports the inferences that her central narrative is true," he says. Zervos lawyer, Mariann Wang. The presentation cites emails and calendar entries to support the claim.
Trump has denied attacking Zervos.
Wang notes that Zervos denounced Trump's alleged sexual assaults on family members and close friends immediately after they occurred and then again over the years and considered taking legal action years before.
He also "contacted several lawyers in 2011, including Gloria Allred, whose records reflect that contact," Wang writes. Allred represented Zervos at the time of his October 2016 press conference in which he first accused Trump of sexual assault, but then he moved away from the case.
The documents include an email to Fox News dated August 9, 2015. In it, Zervos writes that Trump acted inappropriately with her.
“I was in 'The Apprentice'. After the program was over, Trump invited me to a hotel room on the pretext of working for him. He had different reasons. Contact me to talk more, since I have tried to contact you, ”says the email under the subject“ Trump Wanted to Seduce Me ”.
Wang also argues that the Zervos version has been corroborated "in detail" by documents produced from Trump's archives during the discovery process, specifically calendar entries and itineraries from late 2007 to early 2008, the period during the which Zervos says he met with and was assaulted by Trump. Wang says that these documents "line up with the detailed public version of Zervos with surprising precision."
For example, Wang says that Trump's calendar shows him flying from Las Vegas to Los Angeles with his bodyguard Keith Schiller and staying at the Beverly Hills Hotel in Los Angeles on December 21, 2007, the same night that Zervos says he met him there.
Zervos also points out emails exchanged with Trump's assistant, Rhona Graff, about a visit he made to New York and a hard copy of a December 2007 New York Times that says Trump gave him, as evidence of his interactions.
Trump's lawyer rejected Wang's argument in the new presentation.
LOOK : Trump is accused, once again, of alleged sexual assault
"Mrs. Zervos' claims have no merit and are not corroborated by any document," said Marc Kasowitz, founding partner of Kasowitz Benson Torres LLP.
Ongoing research conflict
Wang argues that despite Trump's claims that "there was no truth" in Zervos' accusations, "he has now been forced to produce documents from his own archives confirming that he and the plaintiff were exactly where she said they were. exactly when she said they were there. ”
The Trump Organization previously declared these documents "confidential" and only after months of legal disputes and a recent conference call with the court, Trump and the Trump Organization "finally and reluctantly agreed to lift a series of these unsubstantiated designations," according to documents.
The two sides are now in a dispute over additional documents. Wang says the Trump Organization has incorrectly designated nine pages of records as "confidential" because they contain the president's old cell phone number.
"That argument is absolutely absurd given that the defendant no longer uses that number and, in fact, he himself made it known to his millions of followers on Twitter during the 2016 campaign," the document said.
Wang believes that the documents that Trump's team is holding will corroborate Zervos' account "with even more granularity and with a degree of precision that the plaintiff could not have known if she was not telling the truth." However, Wang's elaboration in the following paragraphs is edited, given the current dispute over confidentiality.