(Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
For someone who spends so much time bellyaching about due process, Donald Trump spends a lot of time trying to evade it.
After Elle advice columnist E. Jean Carroll accused Trump of raping her decades ago in the dressing room of Bergdorf Goodman’s on New York’s Fifth Avenue — an irony lost on no one — Trump said he never met her and accused Carroll of fabricating the story to gin up publicity for her book. On November 4, she sued the president for defamation, and then spent a week trying unsuccessfully to serve him with notice of the suit.
Carroll’s lawyer Roberta Kaplan describes six attempts to effect process in an Ex Parte Application to allow for alternate service. On three successive days, the process server made multiple attempts to leave the papers at Trump Tower New York.
Upon arrival to Trump Tower, the process server passed through a Secret Service security checkpoint and spoke with the concierge. After making a call to a legal office, the concierge told the process server that they would not accept the papers. The process server then tried to leave the papers with the concierge himself. As the process server headed toward the exit, the concierge signaled to Secret Service agents to stop him. A Secret Service agent prevented the process server from leaving the papers at Trump Tower. The agent told him that the Secret Service “had been instructed not to allow process servers to leave papers with [the] concierge.” When the process server asked how process was to be served, the agent replied, “I am not going to do your job for you.”
After being told on the third day that “papers have to go to D.C.,” a different server was turned away twice at the White House visitors’ entrance, in circumstances that made it clear that attempting to post a bill using the regulation thumbtacks or tape “would surely be met with a swift, and potentially dangerous, response.”
Even Trump’s regular counsel at Kasowitz Benson Torres, who represent him in his other defamation suit arising out of an alleged sexual assault, refused to accept process. Apparently, the Commander in Chief is ducking service like a deadbeat dad.
On Tuesday, New York State Supreme Court Justice Deborah Kaplan allowed Carroll to simply mail a copy of the lawsuit to Trump. Bloomberg reports that she can send it by U.S. mail to the White House, or Trump Tower in New York, or by email to one of the six known Trump attorneys listed in Carroll’s Application. (But not Rudy Giuliani, who would would probably just butt-text it to a reporter at 2 a.m.)
And that’s how Donald Trump finally got due process, despite his best efforts to avoid it like the plague.
Judge Rules Trump Rape Accuser Can Mail Complaint to White House [Bloomberg]
Affirmation of Roberta A. Kaplan in Support of Ex Parte Application for an Order Permitting Alternative Service [E. Jean Carroll v. Trump]
Elizabeth Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.