- At least 22 women have accused President Donald Trump of sexual misconduct between the 1970s and 2013.
- Renewed attention has been brought to the allegations amid a national conversation concerning sexual misconduct.
- Trump continues to deny all of the accusations, calling the women "liars."
As a national conversation on sexual misconduct is gripping the country from Hollywood to Capitol Hill, some renewed attention has been focused on the sexual misconduct allegations that at least 22 women have made against President Donald Trump.
A deluge of women made their accusations public following the October 2016 release of the "Access Hollywood" tape, in which Trump was recorded boasting about grabbing women's genitals in 2005. Some others made their stories public months before the tape's release, and still others came forward as recently as December.
Trump has dismissed all of the allegations — which include ogling, harassment, groping, and rape — as "fabricated" and politically motivated accounts pushed by the media and his political opponents, and promised to sue all of his accusers. In some cases, he and his lawyer have suggested that Trump didn't engage in the alleged behavior with a certain woman because she was not attractive enough.
"Every woman lied when they came forward to hurt my campaign," the Republican nominee said during a 2016 rally. "Total fabrication. The events never happened. Never. All of these liars will be sued after the election is over."
Trump has not yet made good on his promise to sue any of the women — although one, Summer Zervos, has sued him for defamation after he called all of his accusers liars – and the White House says that Trump's election proves the American people don't consider the allegations disqualifying.
"The people of this country, at a decisive election, supported President Trump, and we feel like these allegations have been answered through that process," White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters on December 11, after several of the president's accusers appeared on national television to rehash their allegations.
But despite Trump's denials, 50% of voters — 59% of women and 41% of men — surveyed in a Quinnipiac poll released December 19 think the president should resign as a result of the sexual misconduct allegations against him. Several Democratic lawmakers have recently called on Trump to resign over the accusations.
One accuser, Samantha Holvey, who recently spoke out again about her experience with Trump as a Miss USA pageant contestant, said that while his election was painful, she and others see the #MeToo movement as an opportunity to "try round two."
"We're private citizens, and for us to put ourselves out there to try and show America who this man is and especially how he views women, and for them to say 'meh, we don't care' — it hurts," Holvey said on NBC News' "Megyn Kelly Today" in December. "And so now it's just like, all right, let's try round two. The environment's different. Let's try again."
Here are all of the allegations — in chronological order — made by 22 named women:
Jessica Leeds
Allegations:
Jessica Leeds told the New York Times in October 2016 that Trump reached his hand up her skirt and groped her while seated next to her on a flight in the late 1970s.
"He was like an octopus. His hands were everywhere," Leeds said, adding that she fled to the back of the plane.
During an interview on NBC News' "Megyn Kelly Today" in December, Leeds added that she was at a gala in New York three years after the incident on the plane when she ran into Trump, who recognized her and called her a c---.
"He called me the worst name ever," she said. "It was shocking. It was like a bucket of cold water being thrown over me."
Trump's response:
Trump denied the allegations and during a rally in October 2016, suggested that Leeds wasn't attractive enough for him to assault.
"People that are willing to say, 'Oh, I was with Donald Trump in 1980, I was sitting with him on an airplane, and he went after me,'" Trump said. "Believe me, she would not be my first choice."
Ivana Trump
Allegations:
In a 1990 divorce deposition, Trump's first wife and the mother of his three eldest children Ivana Trump accused her then-husband of raping her in a fit of rage in 1989.
Ivana said Trump attacked her after he underwent a painful "scalp reduction" procedure done by a doctor she had recommended, tearing her clothes and yanking out a chunk of her hair.
"Then he jams his penis inside her for the first time in more than 16 months. Ivana is terrified … It is a violent assault," Harry Hurt III, who obtained a copy of the deposition, wrote in a 1993 book about Trump. "According to versions she repeats to some of her closest confidantes, 'he raped me.'"
Ivana later slightly altered her allegation, saying that while she felt "violated" on that occasion, she hadn't accused Trump of raping her "in a literal or criminal sense."
"[O]n one occasion during 1989, Mr. Trump and I had marital relations in which he behaved very differently toward me than he had during our marriage," Ivana wrote in a 1993 statement. "As a woman, I felt violated, as the love and tenderness, which he normally exhibited towards me, was absent. I referred to this as a 'rape,' but I do not want my words to be interpreted in a literal or criminal sense."
Ivana is mother to Donald Jr., Eric, and Ivanka Trump.
Trump's response:
Trump called Hurt's description of Ivana's allegation "obviously false" in 1993, according to Newsday. Trump's lawyer, Michael Cohen, argued in 2015 that his client could not have raped Ivana because "you cannot rape your spouse."
"There's very clear case law," he said.
Cohen later recanted, saying his comment was "inarticulate."
Kristin Anderson
Allegations:
Kristin Anderson, a photographer and former model said Trump reached under her skirt and touched her vagina through her underwear at a New York City nightclub in the early 1990s.
Anderson, then in her early 20s, said she wasn't talking with Trump at the time and didn't realize he was sitting next to her when he groped her without her consent.
"So, the person on my right who, unbeknownst to me at that time was Donald Trump, put their hand up my skirt. He did touch my vagina through my underwear, absolutely. And as I pushed the hand away and I got up and I turned around and I see these eyebrows, very distinct eyebrows, of Donald Trump," she told The Washington Post in October 2016.
Anderson said she and her friends, who were talking together around a table at the time of the incident, were "very grossed out and weirded out," but thought "Okay, Donald is gross. We all know he's gross. Let's just move on."
http://www.youtube.com/embed/Lbd2WwH2wmY
Width: 560px
Height: 315px
Trump's response:
"Mr. Trump strongly denies this phony allegation by someone looking to get some free publicity," Hope Hicks, the president's then-spokeswoman and current White House communications director, told the Post in October 2016. "It is totally ridiculous."
See the rest of the story at Business Insider