Sexual assault allegations against Trump resurface as Super Tuesday nears
A dropped 1997 lawsuit alleged that Trump groped and tried to rape woman, who says she still stands by the allegations
As he attempts to make his lead in the Republican presidential race unassailable at next week’s Super Tuesday primary contests, Donald Trump is being confronted with resurfaced allegations that he sexually assaulted and tried to rape a woman in the early 1990s.
The woman alleged in a federal lawsuit in 1997 that Trump violated her “physical and mental integrity” when he touched her intimately without consent after her boyfriend went into business with him, leaving her “emotionally devastated [and] distraught”.
Trump allegedly told her that if she slept with him she ‘would be an awakened woman’ and that he ‘was the best lover you’ll ever have’
The woman dropped the US$125m lawsuit in Manhattan the following month. It coincided with a separate legal dispute between Trump and the woman’s then-boyfriend over an alleged breach of contract relating to their beauty pageant business venture. Trump claimed at the time that the lawsuit alleging assault was aimed at pressuring him to settle the other dispute, which reportedly he did for a six-figure sum later that year.
On Wednesday, Trump’s counsel Michael Cohen told a reporter for Mail Online that there was “no truth” to the lawsuit’s allegations. “The plaintiff in the matter ... would acknowledge the same,” Cohen was quoted as saying.
Cohen and a spokeswoman for Trump’s campaign did not respond to several requests from the Guardian for comment.
Potentially confusing matters further, the woman appears to now be a supporter of Trump’s campaign for the White House. She told the website Law Newz this week that she would be voting for Trump. “I saw him [Donald] recently, and he said I looked good,” the website reported her as saying. “I have nothing but good things to say about Donald.”