Woman suing Trump over alleged teen rape drops suit, again
A woman who accused Donald Trump of raping her two decades ago when she was a 13-year-old aspiring teen model has again dropped a federal lawsuit over the alleged assaults.
The accuser, identified in the lawsuit by the pseudonym “Jane Doe,” was expected to appear at a news conference in Los Angeles Wednesday, but that appearance was abruptly canceled.
The lawyer who organized the event, Lisa Bloom, said Trump’s accuser had received threats and was too frightened to show up.
In the most recent suit, Trump’s accuser asserted that while she was exploring a modeling career in 1994, she attended a series of parties at the Manhattan home of prominent investor Jeffrey Epstein. She alleges that during those parties the real estate mogul tied her to a bed and raped her. She also claimed Epstein raped her during that series of gatherings
The accuser’s lead attorney, Thomas Meagher of New Jersey, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. He filed a one-page notice dismissing the case Friday evening in federal court in Manhattan. No explanation was given for the action.
Bloom did not immediately respond to requests for comment Friday.
Through his attorney, Trump had flatly denied the woman’s allegations.
“It is categorically untrue. It is completely frivolous. It is baseless. It is irresponsible,” Trump attorney Alan Garten told POLITICO in September. “I won’t even discuss the merits because it gives it credibility that it doesn’t deserve.”
Doe named Trump and Epstein as defendants in the suits and says they knew she was well under 17 — the age of consent. “I understood that both Mr. Trump and Mr. Epstein knew that I was 13 years old,” she wrote.
Two earlier suits were filed over the same alleged events.
The first suit over the alleged rapes was filed in federal court in Riverside, California, in April by someone acting without an attorney and using the name “Katie Johnson.” That suit named both Trump and Epstein as defendants, alleging that the two men held Johnson as a “sex slave” and repeatedly forced her to engage in sexual acts against her will.
Subsequent news reports raised doubts about who filed the suit. Johnson claimed she had just $300 in assets and that she was living at a home in Twentynine Palms, California, but Radar Online reported neighbors said the home had been foreclosed upon and vacant since its owner died last year.
U.S. District Court Judge Dolly Gee dismissed that case in May, ruling that Johnson’s complaint didn’t raise valid claims under federal law. Gee, an appointee of President Barack Obama, noted that the suit cited a criminal statute that doesn’t give rise to civil damages and that the civil statute Johnson cited only applies to actions based on “race-based or class-based animus.”
Another version of the suit was filed in federal court in June, but withdrawn in September after apparently never being served on the defendants.
The case was refiled later that month.
The second and third iterations of the complaint accused Trump of only a single act of rape, but said he had “sexual contact” with the accuser on three other occasions. A declaration from an anonymous witness attached to the later suits continued to accuse Trump of four acts of rape or sexual assault.
A lawyer for Epstein declined to the comment on the lawsuits.
About a decade ago, Epstein came under investigation by local and federal authorities near his Palm Beach, Florida, home over allegations that he solicited underage girls to have sex with him at that residence and another on an island he owned in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Epstein pleaded guilty in June 2008 to two state felony charges relating to prostitution and was sentenced to 18 months in jail. He served only 13 months before being released but was required to register as a sex offender.