Trump
campaign rocked by new wave of sexual harassment allegations
A
series of women have come forward with claims about the Republican,
while footage emerges of inappropriate remarks about a 10-year-old
girl
Maria L La Ganga in
San Francisco and Ben Jacobs in Washington
Thursday 13 October
2016 08.15 BST
A wave of claims
about Donald Trump’s alleged sexual transgressions and
inappropriate behaviour – in one case with a 10-year-old girl –
has emerged, threatening the Republican presidential nominee’s
already fragile campaign less than a month before election day.
Ever since video of
the real estate mogul surfaced on Friday showing him bragging about
how he could grab women’s genitals with impunity, more and more
women have come forward to claim they were demeaned and touched
inappropriately.
By late Wednesday
evening the list of new allegations against Trump included:
Two Miss USA
contestants who claimed Trump deliberately walked in on them when
they were naked in a dressing room.
Two women who allege
Trump groped or kissed them without consent – one in the
first-class seat of an aircraft.
A claim by a woman
that she was groped at a Trump event at his Mar-A-Lago estate in
Florida.
A People magazine
reporter who says Trump forced himself on her shortly before she was
due to interview him and his wife in 2005.
An incident in which
Trump appears to sexualize a 10-year-old girl.
The encounter with
the young girl surfaced in a video of a 1992 Entertainment Tonight
Christmas special in which Trump appeared, according to CBS News.
Trump was 46 at the time.
The holiday show was
filmed at Trump Tower and includes a group of 10-year-old girls.
Trump asks one if she is going up the escalator. When she tells him
she is, he looks at the camera and says to the home audience: “I’m
am going to be dating her in 10 years. Can you believe it?”
On Friday, a 2005
installment of Access Hollywood was leaked to the Washington Post
showing Trump laughing with host Billy Bush about how being famous
allowed him to kiss and grope women without their consent.
Trump dismissed the
comments as nothing more than “locker-room banter” and insisted
during Sunday’s debate with Hillary Clinton that he had not
actually done any of the things he described.
But the ensuing
furor rocked the Republican party. Formerly solid Trump supporters
withdrew endorsements. There were calls for the candidate to step
down. Earlier this week, Trump declared war on the GOP establishment,
tweeting that House speaker Paul Ryan was a “very weak and
ineffective leader”.
And on Wednesday,
the stories told by an increasing number of women belied his
protestations of innocence.
The New York Times
published the story of two women who said that Trump “touched them
inappropriately”.
Jessica Leeds, 74,
said that, more than three decades ago when she was a traveling
businesswoman, she sat next to Trump in the first-class cabin of a
New York-bound flight. The two had never met.
About 45 minutes
after takeoff, Trump lifted the armrest, she said, grabbed her
breasts and tried to put his hand up her skirt. Leeds told the Times
that “he was like an octopus. His hands were everywhere.”
Rachel Crooks told
the news organization that, when she was a 22-year-old receptionist
at a real estate investment and development company located in Trump
Tower, she introduced herself to Trump when they were in an elevator.
They shook hands,
Crooks said, and Trump would not let go. Instead, she said, he began
kissing her – on the cheeks and on the mouth. “I was so upset
that he thought I was so insignificant that he could do that,” she
said.”
Later on Wednesday
night, People Magazine published a story from one of its own
reporters who claimed Trump had forced himself on her.
“He was pushing me
against the wall, and forcing his tongue down my throat,” wrote
Natasha Stoynoff about the 2005 incident, which happened after the
leaked audio with Billy Bush was recorded. She said that Trump later
insisted: “You know we’re going to have an affair, don’t you?”
The Palm Beach Post
published a similar story told by Mindy McGillivray, who said Trump
groped her 13 years ago at his Mar-a-Lago estate, in Palm Beach,
Florida.
The Guardian
reported that Trump deliberately walked in on two young Miss USA 2001
contestants while they were naked and getting dressed for a
rehearsal, according to one of the former beauty contestants, who did
not wish to be identified.
“Mr Trump just
barged right in, didn’t say anything, stood there and stared at
us,” one of the women recalled. Trump’s attitude, she said,
seemed to be: “I can do this because I can.”
In addition, four
women told Buzzfeed that Trump walked into the dressing room during
the 1997 Miss Teen USA beauty pageant while contestants were
changing. Some were only 15 years old.
“I remember
putting on my dress really quick because I was like, ‘Oh my god,
there’s a man in here’,” Mariah Billado, the former Miss
Vermont Teen USA told Buzzfeed. Trump’s alleged response? “Don’t
worry, ladies, I’ve seen it all before.”
In 2005 Trump
discussed going backstage at beauty pageants on air with the radio
shock jock Howard Stern.
In one episode of
Stern’s programme he said: “Well, I’ll tell you the funniest is
that before a show, I’ll go backstage and everyone’s getting
dressed, and everything else, and you know, no men are anywhere, and
I’m allowed to go in because I’m the owner of the pageant and
therefore I’m inspecting it ... I sort of get away with things like
that.”
Trump lawyers given
court date over lawsuit alleging rape of 13-year-old
Read more
The Trump campaign
did not immediately respond to requests from the Guardian for comment
on many of the new allegations. The Republican National Committee
declined to comment.
But in a written
statement, the Trump campaign vigorously denied the New York Times
story, calling it a gross political attack.
“This entire
article is fiction, and for the New York Times to launch a completely
false, coordinated character assassination against Mr Trump on a
topic like this is dangerous,” senior communications advisor Jason
Miller said.
Trump campaign
manager Kellyanne Conway confirmed to the Guardian on Wednesday night
that the Republican nominee was filing a suit against the
publication.
The New York Times
wouldn’t be the first outlet to face litigation from Trump. The
Republican nominee’s wife, Melania, is currently suing the Daily
Mail and he has long pledged to “open up” libel laws in the
United States. Trump has previously threatened to sue the New York
Times in a September tweet.
The Trump campaign
sent out a retraction demand to the New York Times early on Thursday
from the lawyers Kasowitz, benson, Torres and Friedman.
“Your article is
reckless, defamatory and constitutes libel per se. It is apparent
from, among other things, the timing of the article, that it is
nothing more than a politically motivated effort to defeat Mr.
Trump’s candidacy,” wrote Marc Kasowitz, a prominent securities
lawyer also advises the Republican nominee on Israel policy.
Under American libel
law as defined in the 1964 case of New York Times v. Sullivan in
1964, any public figure suing for libel must prove a defamatory
statement was made with actual malice, “with knowledge that it was
false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not”.
Former Miss Universe
Alicia Machado on Trump: ‘I know what he can do’
With polls showing
Hillary Clinton pulling ahead in the race for the White House, her
campaign jumped on the new allegations in a written statement from
spokeswoman Jennifer Palmieri.
“This disturbing
story sadly fits everything we know about the way Donald Trump has
treated women,” Palmieri said. “These reports suggest that he
lied on the debate stage and that the disgusting behavior he bragged
about in the tape are more than just words.”
Libertarian
presidential candidate Gary Johnson said Wednesday that “Trump
cannot win this election. It’s time for Republicans, and all
Americans, to face that reality. And it’s time to reject the notion
that he is the only option other than Hillary Clinton. Americans
deserve better. Women deserve better.”
This is far from the
first time that Trump has denigrated women during the 2016 campaign.
He has called them “disgusting” and “animals”, has said a New
York Times columnist had “the face of a dog”, and spent a week
fighting with a former Miss Universe, Alicia Machado, a Latina woman
he described as “Miss Piggy” and “Miss Housekeeping”.
Additional reporting
by Molly Redden.
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