Summer Zervos is about to achieve what Robert Mueller, Michael Avenatti and Stormy Daniels have so far failed to do: force President Trump to answer questions under oath.
Zervos, a contestant on Trump’s former TV show “The Apprentice,” is suing him for defamation. She says that Trump, while on the campaign trail in 2016, falsely accused her and other women of being liars. Responding to Zervos’ charge that he sexually assaulted her at a Beverly Hills, Calif., hotel in 2007, Trump told an audience at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania that the allegation was a “total fabrication” designed to get her and his other accusers “10 minutes of fame.”
In New York on Friday, Law & Crime reports, attorneys in the civil case agreed to exchange written answers to each side’s questions and objections by Sept. 28. These answers must be provided under oath, so Trump will have tell the truth or face a possible perjury charge.
As Truthdig’s Ear to the Ground noted in June, Trump’s legal peril here is significant. It was a lie by President Bill Clinton in sworn testimony in the Monica Lewinsky scandal that tripped him up, resulting in a perjury charge that ultimately led to his impeachment in 1998.