In mid-April, Scarborough texted with Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner about the pending Enquirer story. Kushner told Scarborough that he would need to personally apologize to Trump in exchange for getting Enquirer owner David Pecker to stop the story. (A spokesperson for Kushner declined to comment). Scarborough says he refused, and the Enquirerpublished the story in print on June 5, headlined “Morning Joe Sleazy Cheating Scandal!”
The Morning Joe co-hosts decided to talk about the episode a day after Trump inaccurately tweeted that Brzezinski attended a New Year’s Eve party at Mar-a-Lago “bleeding badly from a face-lift.” (A photo from that evening backs up Scarborough and Brzezinski’s denial of this.) While the Enquirer denies that Trump encouraged Pecker to investigate the MSNBC hosts, Trump himself has pushed the story publicly. Last August, he tweeted, “Some day, when things calm down, I’ll tell the real story of @JoeNBC and his very insecure long-time girlfriend, @morningmika. Two clowns!”
Rachel Stockman at Lawnewz:
So, if you believe Mika and Joe’s version about what happened, there are some significant legal considerations. First, the phone calls to Mika’s teenage children.
“These calls persisted for quite sometime,” Mika said on the morning talk show.
Number one. Under New York law (Mika reportedly lives in Westchester County), stalking is defined as:
Stalking in the 4th degree: intentionally and with no legitimate purpose engages in conduct that s/he knows or should reasonably know: will cause reasonable fear of material harm to victim or member of victim’s immediate family or causes material harm to mental or emotional health of victim or member of victim’s immediate family or causes a reasonable fear that victim’s employment or business is threatened.
We don’t know what these reporters said to Mika’s teenage children, or if she even reported this incident to police, but certainly the teenagers could have felt “material harm” to their emotional well-being if they were “harassed” with phone calls. Members of the paparazzi have been arrested for harassing subjects of a story especially when the allegations involve children. Photographers and reporters have also been cited for trespassing on private property. An editor for the Enquirer disputes Mika’s description about what happened saying “at no time did we threaten either Joe or Mika or their children in connection with our reporting on the story.”
