Former Apprentice Contestant Summer Zervos Files Defamation Lawsuit against President-Elect Donald Trump

On Nov. 11, 2016, Summer Zervos, a former contestant on The Apprentice, held a press conference calling on Donald Trump to retract his statement calling her a liar—essentially asking him to admit that he sexually assaulted her while she was on the show. Today’s news conference marked the follow through on the threat, as it is now confirmed that a defamation lawsuit has been filed.

Zervos has offered to throw out the entire lawsuit with “no monetary compensation” if Donald Trump retracts his statements calling these allegations lies. In the press conference, both Zervos and her lawyer Gloria Allred focused their message on clearing Zervos’ name, and clearly wanted to convey the message that this is not about money. According to them, Trump can make this all go away by simply admitting that he did what Zervos said he did.

The allegations that Trump denies, per the Los Angeles Times, are as follows:

Zervos said she contacted Trump in 2007 seeking a job. They met in New York and he took her phone number, she said. He called before he visited Los Angeles, dubbed Zervos his “O.C. angel” and proposed dinner, she said.

Zervos said she was summoned to the Beverly Hills Hotel, where she expected to eat at a restaurant. Instead, she said, she was ushered to Trump’s bungalow.

Trump repeatedly tried to kiss her with an open mouth as she darted around the room trying to evade him, Zervos said. He also put his hand on her breast and thrust his genitals at her, she said.

“Dude, you’re tripping right now,” Zervos said she told Trump, as she sought to stop his advances. “Come on, man, get real.”

She said Trump asked her what she wanted, and that she replied she had come to eat dinner.

As they waited for room service, Zervos said, Trump told her that he didn’t think she had ever known love or been in love. Then she said he turned to business, questioning her as though she was on a job interview.

They shared a club sandwich, and Trump advised Zervos to default on her home mortgage, Zervos said, adding that they arranged to meet the next day at Trump’s golf course in Palos Verdes.

Zervos said she left the hotel stunned by Trump’s behavior, but decided to attend the meeting the following day after speaking with her father.

“I wondered if the sexual behavior was some kind of test and whether or not I had passed,” she said. “Obviously he still wanted to talk to me about a job even though I had turned his sexual advances down.”

Zervos said she went on a tour of the golf course and was eventually offered a job, but for half the salary she had expected. She said she called Trump, upset, and that he told her he couldn’t talk because he was golfing and to never use his private number again.

She said she continued to pursue a job with Trump until he told her he could not afford to hire her as he was laying off thousands of employees.

Allred said that Zervos passed a lie detector test, and that they may even subpoena the outtakes from The Apprentice. If those tapes are anything like the infamous Access Hollywood video which lead Zervos to speak out in the first place, this story will approach monumental proportions.