Former Trump Club employee sues for alleged forced sex with boss and illegal confidentiality agreement

A woman formerly employed by the Trump National Golf Club filed a lawsuit Wednesday against the company owned by Donald Trump, claiming that she was sexually pressured by her supervisor and that Trump's personal lawyer had her forced to sign an illegal non-disclosure agreement.

Alice Bianco filed a lawsuit against the Bedminster, New Jersey club in Middlesex County Superior Court. In her claim, first reported by Politico, Bianco makes a series of disturbing allegations about her experience as a server at the club in 2021, when she was 21 years old.

During her first month on the job, Bianco claims the club's catering manager, Pavel Melichar, began sexually harassing her by making her wear short uniform skirts and giving her a gift bottle of cognac , which ultimately led to him forcibly making fun of her. and asking her “what she was going to do for him” in exchange for his job security. Melichar, who was in his 50s, showed Bianco videos of Trump praising him “so she knew he was powerful,” according to the lawsuit.

Despite Bianco's refusals, Melichar escalated his harassment, the lawsuit claims, and “made her understand that he could make her life easy or difficult.” He then allegedly “started demanding (Bianco) that he have sexual relations as a misunderstanding for continued employment and “protection,” as he called it,” over the next two months, then retaliated against her by assigning her unfair work and stealing tips from her when she demanded an end sexual harassment.

Trump's personal attorney, Alina Habba, then entered the fray after one of Bianco's colleagues wrote a letter to the former president's staff accusing Melichar and other supervisors of harassment, the lawsuit says. The filing claims Habba then approached her at work and told her she “heard” about her situation and could “help” her, pressuring the young woman to fire a lawyer specializing in labor law whom she had hired to advise her in this matter.

Once Bianco was left without legal representation, the lawsuit says, Habba called her to a meeting in his car, identified herself as a rape victim and told her it was in Bianco's best interest not to make his statements public. Instead, Habba reportedly said, his best course of action would be to sign a nondisclosure agreement. Bianco signed it without seeing a copy of the agreement and received only a “paltry settlement,” the amount of which was not stated in the lawsuit.

The lawsuit asks the court to block enforcement of the NDA, let Bianco keep the settlement money, force the club to pay its legal fees and refer Habba's actions to the New Jersey Office of Lawyer Ethics .

In statements to Politico, Melichar and Habba rejected Bianco's claims.

“I don’t know anything about it and I have nothing to say,” Melichar said. Habba responded: “I have always conducted myself ethically and did not act any differently under these circumstances. »

Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster did not immediately respond to HuffPost's request for comment.

Trump is not named in Bianco's lawsuit, but at least 26 women have made allegations of sexual assault or harassment against him throughout his career. Earlier this year, a federal jury held him accountable for one of the highest-profile charges, finding him responsible for the sexual assault of writer E. Jean Carroll in the dressing room of a New York department store in the mid-1990s.

Need help? Visit RAINN’s National Online Sexual Assault Hotline or the National Sexual Violence Resource Center website.

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