Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign has been ordered to pay more than $300,000 in legal fees and expenses to a former employee who, according to campaign attorneys, violated the terms of a nondisclosure agreement when she accused Mr. 2016 to kiss violently.
The ruling, the culmination of an arbitration claim dismissed in November, represents the latest example of Mr Trump’s failure to successfully use a nondisclosure agreement against a former employee.
The resolution of the claim, which Mr. Trump’s campaign filed in September 2019, came less than a year after he lost similar efforts to enforce non-disclosure agreements against Jessica Denson, a former campaign official, and Omarosa Manigault Newman, a former White House aide and a star on “The Apprentice.”
Victor E. Bianchini, a retired federal judge, cited both cases in his March 10 decision, when he ruled in favor of Alva Johnson, a former campaign official who unsuccessfully sued Mr. her will during a campaign stop in August 2016.
The Trump campaign “was invested in silencing other employees who were fired or who had in some way criticized the candidate in some way,” Judge Bianchini wrote, adding that the campaign’s “demand to arbitration primarily motivated by maintaining the NDA and mitigating candidate criticism.”
Liz Harrington, a spokeswoman for Mr. Trump, said the decision to award money to Ms. Johnson and her attorneys after a federal judge dismissed her case was “pathetic and totally contrary to the rule of law and any reasonable sense of fairness” used to be.
“Anyone can see that Johnson’s blatant lies and bad faith prevent her from taking full advantage of her illicit behavior,” she said in a statement.
After Judge Bianchini dismissed the arbitration claim in November, calling the agreement “vague and unenforceable” in its confidentiality terms, Ms. Johnson’s attorneys filed a motion demanding that the Trump campaign pay the legal fees and other expenses.
The March 10 ruling ordered the Trump campaign to pay more than $303,000 for Ms. Johnson’s legal fees and expenses.
Ms Johnson, 46, said she was “very happy” with the decision.
Mr Trump’s lawyers “wanted to handcuff me for four years,” Ms Johnson said in a brief interview on Friday. “They came after me pretty hard.”
Her attorney, Hassan Zavareei, said Friday that the Trump campaign had tried to use the nondisclosure agreement “as a cudgel to silence what we consider to be an important public speech by one of the few minority campaign workers.”
In early 2019, Ms. Johnson, who is black, filed a federal lawsuit against Mr. Trump, accusing him of grabbing her during a campaign blackout in 2016 and kissing her as she tried to turn away.
“I immediately felt violated because I didn’t expect it or want it,” Ms Johnson told The Washington Post in February 2019.
But a federal judge questioned her version of events after watching a video of the encounter, eventually dismissing the lawsuit in June 2019.
Judge William Jung of the US District Court for the Middle District of Florida described the complaint as “political” and told Ms. Johnson that she could file an amended lawsuit. She ultimately decided not to pursue the case, saying she had been threatened by Trump supporters and believed she would be unsuccessful before Judge Jung, who was nominated to the bench by Mr. Trump in 2017.
Judge Bianchini said he watched the video and concluded that nothing “inappropriate” appeared to have taken place.
“No objective person could see the video of the encounter as anything that even remotely supports an accusation of battery, kissing, assault or the like,” he wrote. “The federal judge saw it, and the arbitrator sees it.”
Mr. Trump’s campaign could have filed complaints against Ms. Johnson for “malicious prosecution or defamation in an appropriate forum,” Judge Bianchini wrote.
Instead, his campaign filed an arbitration complaint on September 23, 2019, alleging that Ms. Johnson had violated a nondisclosure agreement with the campaign by “disclosing confidential information” and “making disparaging statements about Trump.”
That agreement, Judge Bianchini wrote, has been “determined as unconstitutional” in the cases of Ms. Denson, Ms. Manigault Newman and Mary Trump, Mr. Trump’s niece, who wrote a comprehensive memoir about the family.
Even if the campaign’s motive was not to silence Ms. Johnson, “enforcing the NDA was an inappropriate choice because of its unconstitutionality,” Judge Bianchini wrote.
Judge Bianchini said in his November dismissal of the arbitration claim he noted that he believed Ms. Johnson was “false in her allegations” against Mr Trump. In the March 10 ruling, he described how the video showed Ms Johnson “offering her cheek” with her lips “up in the air next to his cheek”.
It was “understandable” that the Trump campaign would be upset over Ms. Johnson’s charges in an arbitration that arose from a case that was ultimately dismissed, Judge Bianchini wrote.
But blaming her for the arbitration “is misleading and incorrect,” he said in his ruling.
Mr Zavareei said he rejected Judge Bianchini’s characterization of Ms Johnson’s claims. Their validity should have been determined by a jury, not “two older white judges,” he said.
“We believe that this type of behavior should not be accepted in any workplace,” Mr Zavareei said. “She’s a campaign worker. She is the only person he touched and kissed.”