Former “Apprentice” contestant Summer Zervos cannot force President Trump to turn over evidence concerning other women who’ve accused him of sex assaults, a judge ruled in her defamation case Friday.
The privacy victory for Trump, however, came with a bit of bad news: the president must still turn over communications and documents relating specifically to Zervos, who has accused him of groping and kissing her in a Beverly Hills hotel in 2007, the judge ruled.
Zervos is seeking Trump’s calendar and phone records from around that time, in hopes of bolstering her accusations, which she made public just before the October 2016 election.
Trump must also answer questions concerning “whether he had a strategy in responding” to allegations by other women, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Jennifer Schecter ruled.
The rulings were the latest in Zervos’s ongoing lawsuit against the president, in which she says he defamed her by calling her groping allegations “made-up stuff” and “totally fake news.”
Trump intends to fight the lawsuit by proving her groping allegations were in fact lies, his attorney, Christine Montenegro said at Friday’s hearing.
But under the judge’s ruling, Zervos can now seek Trump’s own records from around the time of the alleged attack “as additional proof of her claim,” her lawyer, Mariann Wang, told Reuters in an email.