Judge rules Summer Zervos’ defamation lawsuit can go ahead, while Karen McDougal sues to be released from silence agreement

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Donald Trump was hit by a fresh wave of legal troubles on Tuesday involving women who either allege they had an affair with him or that he sexually harassed them – while the lawyer for Stormy Daniels, the woman previously at the center of the storm, said there is “a lot of information” yet to come in her court battle against the president.

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A New York state judge ruled on Tuesday that a defamation lawsuit filed against Trump by Summer Zervos, a contestant on his former reality show The Apprentice, can go ahead.

Also on Tuesday, a former Playboy model, Karen McDougal, who claimed she had an affair with Trump, sued to be released from a 2016 legal agreement requiring her silence.

Zervos accuses him of sexual harassment, and the go-ahead to proceed in the case raises the possibility of Trump being forced to answer questions by her lawyers about his behavior toward her and other women who have accused him of sexual misconduct.

Judge Jennifer Schecter in Manhattan supreme court said there was “absolutely no authority” to dismiss or stay a civil lawsuit by Zervos related “purely to unofficial conduct” just because Trump is president of the US.

Zervos claims Trump kissed her twice on the lips during a lunch meeting in his New York office in 2007 and, while in Beverly Hills, she alleges he kissed her aggressively and touched her breast. Trump has vehemently denied the claims.

McDougal became the second woman this month to challenge efforts by associates of Trump’s to block them during the presidential campaign from talking about alleged past extramarital relationships with the real estate developer-turned-president. Word of her alleged affair first surfaced in the press in November 2016, and she spoke out about it last month.

McDougal is suing the company that owns The National Enquirer, American Media Inc, which paid her $150,000 and whose chief executive is a friend of Trump’s.

She claims she had an affair with Trump in 2006. That is the same year that pornographic actor Stephanie Clifford, whose stage name is Stormy Daniels, says she began her own affair with Trump, when he was already married to Melania.

Play Video 1:13 Stormy Daniels on Jimmy Kimmel: porn actor casts doubt on denial of Trump affair – video

Clifford is also trying to break out of a non-disclosure agreement and related lawsuits are flying back and forth between her, Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen and, as of last week, Trump himself.

Clifford’s lawyer, Michael Avenatti, told MSNBC on Tuesday: “We have a lot of information, a lot of evidence, a lot of documents that haven’t come to light yet.”

She is due to be interviewed on CBS’s 60 Minutes on Sunday night.