Two women told The New York Times that Donald Trump touched them inappropriately — groping a woman in one instance and kissing a woman in another — during separate encounters that took place as long as three decades ago, the newspaper reported.
A woman, Rachel Crooks of Ohio, told the newspaper she met Trump as a 22-year-old in 2005 — the same year he was recorded bragging in vulgar terms about grabbing women’s genitals.
Trump told the Times there was no truth to either of the claims. In a statement, Trump’s campaign spokesman, Jason Miller, said “the entire article is fiction” and accused the newspaper of launching “a completely false, coordinated character assassination.”
Another newspaper, The Palm Beach Post in Florida, reported Wednesday night that a woman said Trump groped her at his Mar-a-Lago estate 13 years ago. Trump’s campaign said her allegation “lacks any merit or veracity.”
The women’s stories come less than a week after the publication of a 2005 recording in which the Republican nominee boasted of groping women. Trump apologized for his comments, but also dismissed them as “locker room talk” and a distraction from the campaign.
Both women who spoke to the Times said they were coming forward with their stories because of the recording and Trump’s response to questions about it at Sunday’s presidential debate.
The New York businessman said then he had never done the things he bragged about on the recording.
Jessica Leeds, 74, of New York, said she sat beside Trump in the first-class cabin of a flight to New York more than three decades ago.
After less than an hour in the air, he lifted the armrest separating them and began to touch her, she said, and grabbed her breasts and tried to put his hand up her skirt.
“It was an assault,” Leeds told the newspaper. She said she fled to the back of the plane and sat in the coach section.
