In yet another development that may well doom Donald Trump’s presidential bid, four women have come forward and accused him of groping or kissing them in separate encounters years ago, with one episode reportedly going as far back as early 1980s.
The embattled Republican nominee vehemently denied the reports, calling them “fiction”, “fabrication” and “politically-motivated”, and sent a legal notice to The New York Times that published accounts of two women on Wednesday night. Almost simultaneously, The Palm Beach Post and the People magazine published the accounts of the other two women.
“The phoney story in the failing @nytimes is a Total Fabrication. Written by same people as last discredited story on women,” Trump tweeted. His attorney, in his legal notice to the paper, called the publication “reckless, defamatory”, and demanded a full retraction and apology.
Accusations by the four women came just five days after the surfacing of a 2005 video in which Trump was seen making lewd and crude comments and bragging about kissing, groping and trying to have sex with women. At the last debate, however, he maintained that he had never indulged in any sexual assault of the kind that he boasted of in the video.
None of the four women, it turns out, lodged any complaints with law enforcement over the years. The New York Times, which interviewed two of the women, said they both are supporters of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
In its report, the NYT quoted Jessica leeds, a 74-year-old New Yorker, as saying that Trump began to “grope” her while sitting next to her in the first-class cabin of a flight to New York in the early 1980s. About 45 minutes after takeoff, he allegedly “grabbed her breasts and tried to put his hand up his skirt”. leeds reportedly said: “He was like an octopus. His hands were everywhere.”
leeds, a businesswoman at a paper company, indicated that he felt provoked to come forward at this point after hearing Trump’s claim during the second presidential debate on Sunday, asserting he had never been involved in a sexual attack. “I wanted to punch the screen,” she was quoted as saying.
The second woman interviewed by the Times, Rachel Crooks, said that in 2005, when she was working as a receptionist in a real estate firm located in Trump Tower in Manhattan, she encountered Trump outside an elevator one morning. While she introduced herself and the two shook hands, Trump would not let go and began kissing her cheeks, she told the paper, adding that he “kissed me directly on the mouth”.
When the paper contacted Trump over the accusations, he denied them, asserting: “None of this ever took place.” The Times, however, decided to go ahead with the publication.