A New York judge has rejected a request from The New York Times and the Gannett newspaper chain to unseal Donald Trump's 25-year-old divorce file from his separation from his first wife, Ivana. The Times had argued that the confidential documents should be released in order to help the public determine Trump's fitness as a presidential candidate; the court disagreed.
"Were the court to make the confidential records available for journalistic, and thus public, scrutiny, it would impermissibly inject itself into the political process by making the value judgment of what information is useful in determining the present candidate's, or any other candidate's, fitness for office. The court's role in the electoral process is strictly limited to determining whether a candidate complies with the Election Law. The court will not take an action that exceeds that limitation," Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Frank Nervo said, as reported by Politico.
It has been alleged that during the divorce, Ivana Trump accused Donald Trump of raping her; the Trump Organization once attempted to dismiss such rumors by asserting that you "can't rape your spouse." Ivana Trump also clarified that it was not her belief she had been raped and reports as such were "misinterpreted statements and allegations." Both Donald Trump and Ivana Trump opposed unsealing the documents, with Ivana Trump stressing that her privacy should not be compromised for the sake of revealing information about her former husband.
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"If the court were to deprive the candidate party of his rights ... on the ground that there may be something in the confidential file that would be useful in determining his fitness for office, that ground does not exist in the case of his former wife, who is not a candidate," Nervo agreed.
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