Summer Zervos, ‘Apprentice’ Contestant, Says Documents Prove That Donald Trump Sexually Assaulted Her
Summer Zervos, who was a contestant on Season 5 of NBC’s The Apprentice, says she has documents that help prove her claim that President Donald Trump assaulted her after her appearance on the show when he was still the host of the NBC program.
According to a report from The Hollywood Reporter on Thursday, new court documents allege she has evidence that proves that the then-reality star assaulted her at the Beverly Hills Hotel in Los Angeles, California, in 2007. Zervos is claiming that calendar entries, emails, correspondence with Fox News, and a polygraph test prove her allegations against Trump, the outlet reported.
Per the article from The Hollywood Reporter, court papers filed on Thursday show that Zervos had gathered emails between herself and the president’s then-secretary in setting up a meeting with Trump about a year after she filmed her season of The Apprentice. There are also reportedly entries on Trump’s calendar that show he traveled to Los Angeles and stayed at the Beverly Hills Hotel in 2007. Information about the rest of the documents is currently still redacted, the outlet added.
Zervos has also provided a polygraph test, correspondence she had with Fox News in 2015 — a year before she made her accusations public — and a copy of The New York Times that Trump allegedly gave her on the day of the purported assault at the hotel.
Zervos came forward against then-presidential candidate Trump in 2016 following the infamous Access Hollywood tapes, which showed Trump in 2005 joking with show host Billy Bush about what many perceived to be sexual harassment toward women. The president has denied meeting with Zervos, and has called all women who have accused him of sexual assault as “liars.”
As The Hollywood Reporter noted, lawyers for the president are attempting to get the court to label nine pages of documents as confidential because they claim it lists a former cell phone number of the president. Lawyers for Zervos reject that argument, claiming that Trump had previously made the cell phone number public during his 2016 campaign for president.
Lawyers for Zervos said that the president and his lawyers are attempting to keep the new documents that supposedly corroborate her account from public release. The Hollywood Reporter speculated that the documents might also contain phone records, given the complaint from Trump’s team.
A judge had previously rejected an argument made by Trump’s lawyers that claimed the president could not be sued in a state court due to the Supremacy Clause, which holds that federal laws reign supreme over those enacted by states. In rejecting Trump’s argument, the judge said that “no one is above the law.”
As The Inquisitr previously reported, Zervos filed a defamation lawsuit against Trump in 2017, claiming that the president defamed her when he said that she was lying about him having sexually assaulted her. Specifically, Zervos alleged that about a year after she had filmed her season of The Apprentice, she met with Trump for career advice at a Beverly Hills Hotel when he forcibly groped and kissed her.
Per the previous report, Zervos is suing for about $3,000 in damages and a public apology from the president. The lawsuit, which is still in the discovery phase, is reportedly not far off from going to trial, which The Hollywood Reporter said could happen in the midst of the president’s 2020 campaign for re-election.