Donald Trump controversy: Can you rape your spouse?

The Daily Beast unearthed some info from an unpublished tell-all, Lost Tycoon, about Donald Trump’s marriage to Ivana Trump that recounts a violent situation between the ex-spouses.

The book describes a 1989 incident that the book says Ivana has referred to as “rape,” and said she felt “violated.” Trump was upset that evening over a painful scalp removal surgery (an attempt to remove a bald spot,) performed by a plastic surgeon Ivana herself had used. “Your f**king doctor has ruined me!” he told her before assaulting her. During the attack he reportedly pulled out some of Ivana’s hair, and then forced himself on her. The exact line from the book? “According to versions [Ivana] repeats to some of her closest confidantes, ‘he raped me.’”

“It’s not the word that you’re trying to make it into,” Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen told the website. He claimed that Ivana meant “she felt raped emotionally….She was not referring to it [as] a criminal matter, and not in its literal sense, though there’s many literal senses to the word.”

“You’re talking about the frontrunner for the GOP, presidential candidate, as well as a private individual who never raped anybody. And, of course, understand that by the very definition, you can’t rape your spouse. It is true. You cannot rape your spouse. And there’s very clear case law.”

It turns out, though, that this is not the case. Since 1993 in all states, and since 1984 in New York where the Trump incident occurred, it is illegal to rape your spouse.

Mr. Cohen has since recanted his assertion. He told the New York Times that he had spoken out of anger. “Rarely am I surprised by the press, but the gall of this particular reporter to make such a reprehensible and false allegation against Mr. Trump truly stunned me,” Mr. Cohen said in a statement. “In my moment of shock and anger, I made an inarticulate comment—which I do not believe—and which I apologize for entirely.”