Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump told CNN anchor Anderson Cooper at the second presidential debate on Oct. 9 that he had never touched women without their consent. The comment came after The Washington Post published a video of Trump bragging to “Access Hollywood” host Billy Bush in 2005 that he could kiss and grope women without their permission because he was a celebrity.
“Have you ever done those things?” Cooper asked at the debate. “I will tell you: No, I have not,” Trump responded.
Since then, a series of women have come forward to accuse Trump of inappropriately touching or kissing them without their permission. Trump has denied the allegations. In an Oct. 15 morning tweet, he called them “100% fabricated and made-up charges, pushed strongly by the media and the Clinton Campaign,” warning that they “may poison the minds of the American Voter.”
Here is a roundup of all the allegations from named accusers who have spoken publicly, as well as the Trump campaign’s responses.
Kristin Anderson
Kristin Anderson told The Washington Post that Trump put his hand up her skirt, touching her vagina through her underwear, during a brief encounter in a Manhattan nightclub in the early 1990s.
Now a photographer, Anderson had been an up-and-coming model who was earning a living as a makeup artist and restaurant hostess. She said she was engrossed in conversation with acquaintances while seated on a red velvet couch when she felt the hand of a stranger slide up her skirt. She said she shoved the hand away and fled but got a good look at Trump, who was a well-known celebrity at the time. Two friends told The Post that Anderson had told them about the incident in the years since it occurred, including one who said she was told days later.
“I’ve always kept quiet. And why should I keep quiet?” Anderson told The Post.
Trump campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks called Anderson’s account a “phony allegation by someone looking to get some free publicity.” At a Friday rally, Trump appeared to refer to Anderson’s account: “One came out recently where I was sitting alone in some club. I really don’t sit alone that much. Honestly, folks, I don’t think I sit alone.” Anderson never told The Post that Trump was alone.
Rachel Crooks
Rachel Crooks was a 22-year-old receptionist working for a real estate company with offices in the Trump Tower that did business with the Trump Organization when she told the New York Times that Trump kissed her on the mouth without permission.
She said she encountered the mogul outside an elevator in 2005. After shaking hands with Trump, she told the Times, he began kissing her cheeks and then kissed her on the mouth. Disturbed, Crooks told several friends about the encounter shortly after it happened. “I was so upset that he thought I was so insignificant that he could do that,” she told the Times.
“None of this ever took place,” Trump told the Times.
Jessica Drake
An adult film actress, Jessica Drake appeared at a news conference with lawyer Gloria Allred on Oct. 22 to accuse Trump or a man acting on his behalf of offering her $10,000 and the use of Trump’s private jet if she would go to his hotel suite alone after they met at a charity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe in 2006. She also said that Trump kissed her and two other women without their permission at the event. Trump’s campaign called the account “totally false and ridiculous” and said Trump did not know the woman.
Jill Harth
In a lawsuit described by the Boston Globe in April, Jill Harth alleged that Trump repeatedly harassed her over several years starting in 1992, when she and her boyfriend operated a Florida company that ran a beauty contest and other shows that Trump wanted to be held at his Atlantic City casino.
In one 1992 incident, Harth alleged, Trump put his hand up her skirt to her crotch under a table while dining with her and her boyfriend. In 1993, she alleged that while giving her a tour of Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., he pushed her against a wall of the room being used as daughter Ivanka’s bedroom and began kissing her.
"I was admiring the decoration, and next thing I know he's pushing me against a wall and has his hands all over me," Harth told the New York Times in a recent interview.
Harth and her boyfriend’s business relationship ended in a dispute that caused them to file a lawsuit against Trump; according to the Globe, Harth filed another suit against Trump on her own.
The litigation was settled in 1997, and Harth later dated Trump for several months in 1998. She also sent an email to the Trump campaign last year declaring herself “definitely Team Trump” and met with Trump at a campaign event in January. She told the Times she was trying to get work.
Trump has denied Harth’s allegations repeatedly over the years, and Hicks, the campaign spokeswoman, told the Times recently that “Mr. Trump denies each and every statement made by Ms. Harth.”
Cathy Heller
About 1997, Cathy Heller told the Guardian that she was attending a Mother's Day brunch at Mar-a-Lago when she was introduced to Trump, who she said grabbed her and moved to kiss her on the mouth. She said she leaned back to avoid him, but Trump exclaimed "Oh come on," and then held her firmly while he kissed her on the side of her mouth for an uncomfortably long moment.
A friend told the Guardian that Heller shared the story in 2015. Heller said she has met Hillary Clinton and donated to her campaign but came forward after Trump and his supporters insisted that the “Access Hollywood” tape represented only lewd talk. “It’s action,” Heller said.
In a statement, Trump campaign spokesman Jason Miller called Heller’s account “false.” “There is no way that something like this would have happened in a public place on Mother’s Day at Mr. Trump’s resort. It would have been the talk of Palm Beach for the past two decades,” he said, calling Heller “a politically motivated Democratic activist with a legal dispute against this same resort.”
Jessica Leeds
Jessica Leeds told the New York Times that she was seated next to Trump in the first-class cabin of an airplane in the early 1980s when he lifted the armrest between them and began groping her breasts and trying to put his hand up her skirt. "He was like an octopus," she told the Times. "His hands were everywhere." Leeds, who was 38 at the time, had never met Trump.
Trump has denied the allegation and suggested that Leeds was not attractive enough to draw his attention. “ ‘I was sitting with him on an airplane, and he went after me on the plane,’ ” Trump said at a rally in North Carolina on Friday, mockingly impersonating the woman. “Yeah, I’m gonna go after — believe me, she would not be my first choice, that I can tell you.”
Temple Taggart McDowell
Temple Taggart McDowell told NBC News that she met Trump in 1997, when she was 21 and participating in the Miss USA beauty pageant as Miss Utah. Trump owned the pageant at the time. She said Trump kissed her on the lips without permission when she met him at a rehearsal for the event. She said he kissed her again when she met with him at Trump Tower to discuss modeling contracts. McDowell said the kiss discomfited a pageant official who was also present.
“I don’t even know who she is,” Trump told NBC News in response. “She claims this took place in a public area. I never kissed her. I emphatically deny this ridiculous claim.”
Mindy McGillivray
Mindy McGillivray told the Palm Beach Post that Trump groped her buttocks when she attended an event at Mar-a-Lago in 2003. Then 23, McGillivray said the incident occurred as she stood with a photographer friend who was working at the event, a concert by Ray Charles. She said Trump gave her a “pretty good nudge — more of a grab” at the event as she stood in a group of people. The photographer, Ken Davidoff, confirmed to the Palm Beach Post that McGillivray immediately told him that Trump had grabbed her. Trump’s campaign has denied the account.
Natasha Stoynoff
In an article posted to the website of People magazine, Natasha Stoynoff wrote that she was a reporter for the magazine assigned to the Trump beat when she visited Trump's Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago, in December 2005 to write a story about his first anniversary with wife Melania. She wrote that while Melania was upstairs changing, Trump pushed her against a wall and kissed her, "forcing his tongue down my throat."
Stoynoff said the encounter was interrupted by Trump’s butler. Afterward, she said she told a colleague at People, who encouraged her to disclose the incident to her editor, but she said she didn’t because she feared retaliation. “Like many women, I was ashamed and blamed myself for his transgression,” she wrote.
Trump has denied this allegation, telling a crowd at a rally Friday, “When you looked at that horrible woman last night, you said, ‘I don’t think so.’ ” He also tweeted, “Why didn’t the writer of the 12-year-old article in People Magazine mention the ‘incident’ in her story. Because it did not happen!”
An attorney for Melania Trump also demanded that People retract the story, indicating that Melania Trump never ran into Stoynoff on the street after the incident, as the journalist recounted in her piece.
On Tuesday, People Magazine published the accounts of six individuals who said Stoynoff had told them about her encounter with Trump in the years since it occurred, some immediately after it took place. One friend recalled that she was walking with Stoynoff when the reporter bumped into Melania Trump.
Karena Virginia
Karena Virginia, 45, a yoga instructor from New Jersey, appeared at a news conference with lawyer Allred on Oct. 20 to accuse Trump of groping her in 1998. She said she encountered Trump outside the U.S. Open tennis tournament, while both were waiting to be picked up by town cars. She had never met Trump but said he began commenting on her appearance to a group of men before approaching her, putting his arm around her and reaching down to touch her breast. Trump spokeswoman Jessica Ditto dismissed Virginia’s account as “a coordinated, publicity-seeking attack” orchestrated by Allred, a Hillary Clinton supporter.
Summer Zervos
A former contestant on the television show "The Apprentice," Zervos held a news conference alongside Allred, the famed women's rights lawyer, Gloria on Oct. 14 to accuse Trump of aggressively kissing her and groping her breasts during a 2007 meeting that took place when she sought a job at the Trump Organization.
Zervos, who now owns a California restaurant, said the incident occurred in Trump’s bungalow suite at the Beverly Hills Hotel, where she had gone to discuss employment with Trump over dinner. She said he grew cold after she rejected his advances. Later, she was offered a job but at half the salary they had been discussing.
Zervos said she told several friends and family members about the incident at the time and said she emailed Trump in April 2016, in what she said was an attempt to encourage him to apologize for his behavior. “I have been incredibly hurt by our previous interaction,” she said she wrote.
In a statement, Trump said he “vaguely” remembered Zervos from the reality television show but denied he ever met her at a hotel or “greeted her inappropriately.”
His campaign also released a statement from John Barry, who identified himself as Zervos’s first cousin, who said Zervos had always spoken about Trump in “glowing” terms and suggested her accusations might be tied to Trump’s refusal to visit her restaurant during the primary. The campaign also distributed what it said was an email Zervos wrote to Trump’s assistant on April 16 in which she wrote that she was the only former show contestant who owned a business where people could come to “express their admiration” for Trump and said she would “greatly appreciate reconnecting” with him.
On Sunday, a licensed clinical therapist who used to be friends with Zervos stepped forward to say that Zervos had confided in her in 2010 that Trump had been “verbally, physically and sexually aggressive” with her. Allred also released text messages between Zervos and her cousin to demonstrate there has been a family rift between them in recent months.
Editor's note: This list has been updated to include only women who have appeared publicly or spoken with reporters about their allegations. One additional accuser, Cassandra Searles, posted an entry on Facebook indicating that Trump "continually grabbed" her buttocks when she was Miss Washington in 2013. She has not otherwise spoken about the experience and has not returned messages.
