Monday, October 17, 2016

We Asked a Lawyer if Donald Trump Could Ever Get Prosecuted for Sexual Assault

Summer Zervos, right, reads a statement alongside her attorney Gloria Allred during a news conference in Los Angeles, Friday October 14, 2016. (AP Photo/Ringo H.W. Chiu)

On October 7, the Washington Post released the now-infamous video from 2005 in which Donald Trump brags about how his status allows him to "grab , absolutely. I've seen that a lot, where potential allegations and potential complainants choose not to come forward because they're afraid of being countersued or of having their lives torn apart with a counter investigation.

Is comparing Trump to Cosby useful at all? Both are obviously famous men who seem to have evaded public accountability for alleged sex offenses for decades, but is that where the overlap ends?
It seems pretty different to me as a prosecutor because of the allegations of the drugging that went on with Bill Cosby. I think they're similar in that there is a sudden flood of many claimants coming forward. But I think from a criminal law standpoint, it seems very different because of the allegations of planning, meaning needing to have certain Quaaludes ahead of time, planning to get a person drinking. All of those allegations make for a different type of predatory behavior. This would seem that if all of these allegations were true, it would seem like more of a serial impulsive predator who's looking for people in a vulnerable position and thinks everyone should be attracted to him.

By running for president, it does seem like Trump laid the groundwork for his potentially becoming a Cosby-esque figure, though. It's hard to imagine all these women would have gone after him if he were still just a reality TV show host, right?
Absolutely. I think anyone who's gonna run for public office nowadays needs to expect that there's gonna be a tremendously aggressive investigation of them. And I'm quite confident that if he were not in the position he was in, that most of this would never have come out.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

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