Trump Campaign Owes $300,000 in Legal Fees After Another ...

Donald Trump’s presidential campaign has been ordered to pay more than $300,000 in legal fees and expenses to a former employee who the campaign’s lawyers said had violated the terms of a nondisclosure agreement when she accused Trump of forcibly kissing her in 2016.The award, the culmination of an arbitration claim that was dismissed in November, represents the latest instance of Trump’s failure to use a nondisclosure agreement successfully against an ex-worker.The resolution of the claim, which Trump’s campaign filed in September 2019, came less than a year after he had lost similar efforts to enforce nondisclosure agreements against Jessica Denson, a former campaign worker, and Omarosa Manigault Newman, a former White House aide and a star on “The Apprentice.”Sign up for The Morning newsletter from the New York TimesVictor Bianchini, a retired federal judge, cited both of those cases in his decision March 10 when he ruled in favor of Alva Johnson, a former campaign worker who in 2019 unsuccessfully sued Trump, claiming he kissed her on the mouth against her will during a campaign stop in August 2016.The Trump campaign “was invested in silencing other employees that were terminated or had somehow criticized the candidate in other ways,” Bianchini wrote, adding that the campaign’s “demand for arbitration appears to have been principally motivated by upholding its NDA and curtailing any criticism of the candidate.”Liz Harrington, a spokesperson for Trump, said the decision to award money to Johnson and her lawyers after a federal judge had dismissed her case was “pathetic and totally contrary to the rule of law and any reasonable sense of fairness.”“Anyone can see that Johnson’s blatant lies and bad faith conduct completely preclude her from profiting from her illicit conduct,” she said in a statement.After Bianchini dismissed the arbitration claim in November, calling the agreement “vague and unenforceable” in its confidentiality provisions, Johnson’s lawyers made a motion demanding that the Trump campaign pay for legal fees and other expenses.The March 10 ruling ordered the Trump campaign to pay more than $303,000 for Johnson’s legal fees and expenses.Johnson, 46, said she was “really happy” with the decision.Trump’s lawyers “wanted to handcuff me for four years,” Johnson said in a brief interview Friday. “They came after me pretty hard.”Her lawyer, Hassan Zavareei, said Friday that the Trump campaign had tried to use the nondisclosure agreement “as a cudgel to silence what we view as important public speech by one of the few minority campaign workers.”In early 2019, Johnson, who is Black, filed a federal lawsuit against Trump, accusing him of grabbing her during a campaign stop in 2016 and kissing her as she tried to turn away.“I immediately felt violated because I wasn’t expecting it or wanting it,” Johnson told The Washington Post in February 2019.But a federal judge questioned her version of events after viewing a video of the encounter and ultimately dismissed the suit in June 2019.Judge William Jung of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida described the complaint as “political” and told Johnson she could file an amended lawsuit.