Lawyers for presidential front-runner Donald Trump are taking a page out of The Soprano‘s playbook with The Daily Beast for resurrecting nasty details involving an alleged rape that emerged during he and Ivana Trump‘s early 90s divorce case.
The story by Tim Mak has relevance since Trump recently accused Mexicans of sending their worst people — you know, rapists — over the border.
“I mean somebody’s doing it! … Who’s doing the raping?”
Hey, Trump asked.
Among the more disturbing details — which turned up in Lost Tycoon: The Many Lives of Donald J. Trump by Harry Hurt III — involves an argument the couple had after Trump’s scalp reduction surgery, which reportedly went badly.
The actual rape details are also startling, which you can read in The Daily Beast here. A sub-headline stresses that Ivana Trump later clarified that it was not rape in the “criminal sense.” And Trump’s lawyer declared that legally a man cannot rape his wife — a point the reporter shoots down with a legal citation.
Because of a gag order, Trump’s ex-wife is legally barred from gabbing about the case, but she did say The Daily Beast story based on her own statements in her deposition was “without merit.”
To be sure, Trump’s lawyers, specifically his special counsel Michael Cohen, are not taking The Daily Beast story lightly.
Here he makes vicious mob-like threats against the publication and the reporter.
“I will make sure that you and I meet one day while we’re in the courthouse. And I will take you for every penny you still don’t have. And I will come after your Daily Beast and everybody else that you possibly know,” Cohen said. “So I’m warning you, tread very fucking lightly, because what I’m going to do to you is going to be fucking disgusting. You understand me?”
“You write a story that has Mr. Trump’s name in it, with the word ‘rape,’ and I’m going to mess your life up… for as long as you’re on this frickin’ planet… you’re going to have judgments against you, so much money, you’ll never know how to get out from underneath it,” he added.
The Mirror reached out to Mak to find out whether he’s frightened about being taken for all he’s worth.
By the looks of his Twitter feed, which is full of details and tidbits from the story, that would be a no.