Why Bill Clinton's Sex Scandals Are Bad News for Donald Trump

A woman found to have been sexually assaulted by Donald Trump will still be able to sue him if he is elected president, a legal expert has said.

New York University law professor Stephen Gillers told Newsweek that a precedent has already been set in the sexual harassment case taken by former Arkansas state employee Paula Jones against President Bill Clinton. The Supreme Court ruled that Clinton could not use his presidency to delay the Jones case. Subpoenas issued in the Jones case led to the discovery that Clinton was having a White House affair with intern Monica Lewinsky and a massive political scandal.

That precedent means that a defamation lawsuit filed by former Elle columnist E. Jean Carroll could still go forward if Trump wins the presidency next year and the case is still live.

"A civil case would not be delayed, as we know from Jones v. Clinton. But demands of a civil case can more easily be managed and can't lead to prison," Gillers said.

He added that, in contrast, the Supreme Court would likely "delay any state criminal prosecution of a sitting president until the end of his term, regardless of when the alleged crime occurred".

Newsweek sought email comment on Friday for an attorney representing Trump, who is the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.

The 1997 Supreme Court case of Clinton v. Jones established that a sitting president has no immunity from lawsuits for acts done before taking office and unrelated to the office.

Jones sued to recover damages from Clinton, alleging that, while he was governor of Arkansas, "he made 'abhorrent' sexual advances to her. She claimed her rejection of those advances led to punishment by her supervisors in the state job she held at the time," according to a Supreme Court summation of the facts in the case.

Clinton "promptly advised the Federal District Court that he would file a motion to dismiss on Presidential immunity grounds, and requested that all other pleadings and motions be deferred until the immunity issue was resolved," the Supreme Court noted.

Justice John Paul Stevens delivered the majority Supreme Court ruling in favor of Jones. Chief Justice William Rehnquist joined the decision, as did Justices Sandra Day O'Connor; Antonin Scalia; Anthony Kennedy; David Souter; Clarence Thomas and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Justice Stephen Breyer filed a separate opinion concurring with the decision.

Jones' lawyers continued with their case, focusing on White House house intern, Monica Lewinsky, to show that Clinton had a habit of seeking sexual gratification from female employees.

As speculation grew, Clinton famously held a press conference in which he denied having "sexual relations" with Lewinsky.

In August 1998, Clinton admitted to a federal grand jury that he had had ''inappropriate intimate physical contact'' with Lewinsky in the White House but said it did not fit the definition of sex used by the Jones' lawyers.

In 2019, E. Jean Carroll first publicly stated that Donald Trump attacked her in the dressing room of a luxury Manhattan department store in the mid-1990s. In May of 2023, a jury awarded her $5 million in damages, concluding that Trump sexually assaulted and defamed her.

Carroll's lawyers are seeking another $10 million in compensation and "substantially more" in punitive damages for remarks Trump made about her while president and after the jury's verdict.

This new defamation lawsuit came after Trump allegedly told a White House reporter that the rape never happened and that Carroll was not his "type." The current lawsuit also cites Trump as calling Carroll's version of events "fake" and labeling her a "whack job" during a CNN town hall broadcast.

Both of Carroll's defamation lawsuits arose from Trump's denials that he had raped her in a Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room in Manhattan in the mid-1990s.