At 3 p.m. PST on Wednesday afternoon, a Jane Doe plaintiff had a
planned public event at the Lisa Bloom law firm in Los Angeles. The event never happened.
According to court papers filed in the Southern District of New York at the end of September, Jane Doe filed suit against Donald Trump
and Jeffrey Epstein for rape, sexual misconduct, criminal sexual acts, sexual abuse, forcible touching, assault, battery, intentional and reckless infliction of emotional distress, duress, false
imprisonment, and defamation.
She was 13 years old at the time of the alleged crimes.
Yesterday’s event was called off after “Jane Doe received numerous
threats … [and] she decided she [was] too afraid to show her face,” according to a tweet by Irin Carmon, a reporter at MSNBC and NBC.
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When trying to access Lisa
Bloom’s site around 6 p.m. EST, it was unreachable, due to assumed excessive traffic. Later, Bloom tweeted that her Web site and emails were hacked.
A number of reputable news
outlets have reported on this story, including Politico, Quartz, The Huffington Post and New York Daily News. The accusations have yet to hit other mainstream
outlets.
Doe’s sudden disappearance makes it less likely we will hear anything about this case before November 8.
Still, key facts in this case are unconditionally
true:
Jeffrey Epstein, a known paedophile, who pleaded guilty to felony charges of prostitution in 2008 and was sentenced to 18 months in jail, has a long and friendly relationship
with Donald Trump.
In 2002, Trump told New York magazine, “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many
of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it -- Jeffrey enjoys his social life.”
Two declarations have been submitted in this case from women who were privy to the
alleged crimes, one who said she saw the acts take place, and another who was in school with Jane Doe and was told about the events. Both have decided to remain anonymous.
The judge
assigned to the case in question has set a court date for December 16, 2016, and thus, our potential president elect may be involved in a case where he is accused of raping a 13-year-old girl, with
witnesses corroborating Jane Doe’s account. Hillary Clinton may have her own legal troubles, but I’ll leave it up to the reader to determine which is more abhorrent.
Bloom is the daughter of renowned women’s-rights lawyer Gloria Allred.