National Review "As if Donald Trump didn’t have enough legal problems and bad juju, now he has another headache to deal with: a lawsuit filed yesterday in federal court in New York accusing him (along with billionaire Jeffrey Epstein) of raping a 13 year old girl in 1994 at a party at Epstein’s place. The allegations are quite lurid, and reek of similar underage-sex-slavery charges made against Epstein. The lawsuit itself is not that likely to go very far; it appears to be a rehash of a suit previously dismissed in California. The statute of limitations has long since run out, requiring the “Jane Doe” plaintiff to offer creative arguments for why she should be able to bring this up now.
"That said, there’s no statute of limitations in politics. Is there anything to this? We know, on the one hand, that nasty truths come out about political figures every campaign season. As a thrice-married admitted adulterer, Trump’s history doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence in this area, from bragging about bedding married women to his comments to Howard Stern about watching Paris Hilton’s sex tape to his weird habit of commenting on the sex appeal of his own daughter to embracing convicted rapist Mike Tyson to defending Bill Clinton himself in his sex scandals in the 1990s, just to pick a few examples. We know, on the other hand, that bogus sex scandals follow just about everyone who makes it to the national level in politics. Offhand, I believe Mitt Romney may have been the only major party nominee the past 25 years who never had anybody in the press try to shop a sex scandal story (real or bogus) about him. Voters mostly gave the benefit of the doubt to Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio when flimsy sex stories were run against them in the primaries. Trump’s great wealth and messy public personal life make him a big target for this sort of thing. Sometimes, we have to just look at the facts we have and use our judgment.
"Trump’s statement at the time about the original lawsuit was a blanket denial, which extended as far as questioning whether the plaintiff even existed: " . . .
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