Multiple women have come forward to accuse Donald TrumpDonald John TrumpSenate advances public lands bill in late-night vote Warren, Democrats urge Trump to back down from veto threat over changing Confederate-named bases Esper orders ‘After Action Review’ of National Guard’s role in protests MORE of uninvited kissing or groping.
The stories, which have been told to different news organizations, come after the Republican presidential nominee denied during Sunday’s debate, in response to a question from moderator Anderson Cooper, that he had ever sexually assaulted a woman.
ADVERTISEMENT
Trump has also denied the latest reports in The New York Times, People and the Palm Beach Post, calling them fabrications and threatening lawsuits.
“The phoney story in the failing @nytimes is a TOTAL FABRICATION. Written by same people as last discredited story on woman. WATCH!” Trump wrote in a tweet on Thursday morning.
“None of this ever took place,” Trump told a Times reporter in a phone interview.
Four women in the last 24 hours have accused Trump of kissing or groping them against their will.
The women who spoke to the Times, who are both supporters of Democratic nominee Hillary ClintonHillary Diane Rodham ClintonWhite House accuses Biden of pushing ‘conspiracy theories’ with Trump election claim Biden courts younger voters — who have been a weakness Trayvon Martin’s mother Sybrina Fulton qualifies to run for county commissioner in Florida MORE, said they felt compelled to speak out after Trump said he had never done the things he was caught boasting about on a 2005 videotape released Friday.
On that tape, Trump bantered with “Access Hollywood” host Billy Bush about going up to women and kissing them: “I don’t even wait.”
He also said he could get away with things because he was a celebrity, and that women would let him do anything. “Grab them by the p—y, you can do anything,” he says on the recording.
Trump has repeatedly dismissed the comments as “locker room talk,” but the women said Trump’s words struck a nerve because the talk was similar to what they had experienced.
Jessica Leeds, now 74, told the Times that Trump groped her while seated on a flight more than 30 years ago. She said that Trump began to grab her breasts and tried to put his hand up her skirt as he sat next to her, the two strangers until the interaction.
“He was like an octopus … his hands were everywhere,” she told The Times.
“It was an assault.”
Another woman, Rachel Crooks, told the Times that Trump kissed her on the month when she was a 22-year-old receptionist in 2005.
“It was so inappropriate,” Crooks told The Times.
“I was so upset that he thought I was so insignificant that he could do that.”
A third woman told the Palm Beach Post, in a story published on Wednesday, that Trump had groped her at a resort near Miami in 2003.
Mindy McGillivray, now 36, told the Post that Trump grabbed her buttocks while she helped a photographer during a concert at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.
People magazine published a story on Wednesday night by one of its former writers, who said she had received unwanted advances from Trump in December 2005 while she toured Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort for an interview with Trump and his wife.
After Melania Trump left her along with Donald Trump, writer Natasha Stoynoff said Trump pushed her against a wall and forcibly kissed her.
Stoynoff said Trump then told her that they were going to have an affair and promised to take her to an expensive steakhouse. He also reportedly referenced the famous tabloid cover during his affair with Marla Maples declaring “Best Sex I Ever Had.”
Trump’s campaign has fought back fiercely against all of the stories.
In a statement to People, a spokesperson for Trump said Stoynoff’s story never happened.
“There is no merit or veracity to this fictional story,” the spokesman said. “Why wasn’t this reported at the time? Mr. Trump was the biggest star on television and surely this would have been a far bigger scoop for People magazine.
“She alleges this took place in a public space with people around. This is nothing [but a] politically motivated fictional pile-on.”
Trump spokesman Jason Miller in a statement to the Times said its entire article was “fiction” and a “completely false, coordinated character assassination against Mr. Trump.”
“To reach back decades in an attempt to smear Mr. Trump trivializes sexual assault, and it sets a new low for where the media is willing to go in its efforts to determine this election.”
Trump’s lawyers sent a late-night email to the Times demanding the retraction of the “libelous article” and threatened a lawsuit, according to a letter published by Buzzfeed News and other outlets.