A former server at Donald Trump’s Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club filed a lawsuit Wednesday alleging that her superior coerced her into sex and that Trump’s personal lawyer, Alina Habba, tricked her into signing a non-disclosure agreement.
The ex-server, Alice Bianco, was named in the lawsuit, which was filed in New Jersey’s Middlesex County Superior Court and obtained by The Daily Beast. The former president was not named as a defendant.
Bianco claimed she was sexually assaulted in 2021, when she was 21, by the club’s food and beverage manager, Pavel Melichar, at Trump National Golf Club. The lawsuit alleged that the Melichar harassed her and forcibly attempted to kiss her against her wishes, not long after he’d ordered her to work in short skirts and gifted her a bottle of Cognac.
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Bianco claimed she eventually gave into Melichar’s advances after he gave her “unfair job assignments” for her rejections, and they eventually had sex. The lawsuit alleged that Melichar pushed Bianco “to engage in sex as a quid pro quo for continued employment and ‘protection.’”
The lawsuit said Bianco didn’t reveal Melichar’s alleged actions to anyone until she found out a co-worker was writing a letter to Trump’s personal staff about her own harassment incidents involving Melichar. Bianco had the co-worker include her experiences in the letter, which led to a phone call from human resources.
Bianco said that’s when she decided to find a lawyer. Shortly after, the lawsuit said that Habba, a member of the club, approached Bianco “pretending to be a friend” and told her she’d heard about the letter.
The lawsuit claimed that Habba offered to help her with the situation, but, in reality, was orchestrating a plan to trick Bianco into signing a non-disclosure agreement that’d silence her for a “paltry sum,” the lawsuit claimed.
“Habba used the unethical silencing of my client, Ali Bianco, as a way to propel herself into Trump’s inner circle,” Bianco’s attorney, Nancy Erika Smith, wrote in a statement to POLITICO. “Her behavior was predatory. Pretending to be ‘neutral’ when acting on behalf of one party is clearly unethical.”
Bianco’s lawsuit is asking a judge to:
- Stop the club from enforcing the NDA
- Allow Bianco to keep her settlement money
- Force the club to pay Bianco’s legal fees
- Refer Habba’s “unethical behavior” to the New Jersey Office of Attorney Ethics.
The lawsuit emphasized Bianco is not seeking additional monetary damage for the ordeal.
Habba told POLITICO in an email that she always conducts herself “ethically and acted no differently in this circumstance.” Reportedly reached by phone, Melichar told the website that he didn’t know anything about the lawsuit, adding that he had “nothing to say.”
