October 08, 2016, 12:42 am
Trump ex-girlfriend makes groping allegations in NYTimes column
By Ben Kamisar
A woman who did business with Donald Trump and later dated him is accusing him of groping her in a New York Times column that was posted just a few hours after the release of audio depicting Trump boasting about his aggressive treatment of women.
New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof details allegations from Jill Harth and her boyfriend, George Houraney, who owned a company that ran a beauty contest. Harth filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against Trump in 1997, according to the column, but withdrew it when settling a separate lawsuit with the businessman over the contract.
Harth said that in 1992, Trump sat next to her at dinner and put his hand up her skirt, prompting her to flee to the restroom as an “escape route.”
In another instance, Harth alleges that Trump grabbed her in the empty bedroom of his daughter, Ivanka Trump, when she and Houraney came to his Florida estate to sign a contract in 1993 for their “calendar girls” business.
"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 recounts in the column.
“He was trying to kiss me. I was freaking out.”
Harth said she protested Trump's advances and eventually left the room.
At Trump’s request, according to Harth, they brought some of the girls in the calendar with them to his Florida home.
A separate sexual harassment lawsuit filed by one of the calendar girls accused Trump of wandering into her bedroom late at night. The woman is not named in column.
The Trump campaign declined to comment on the allegations, according to the column. Trump had previously said that Harth and Houraney had only filed the sexual harassment suit because their contract lawsuit was stalled. He has called the lawsuit about slipping into a girl’s room “total nonsense.”
Harth recalled that when she and Houraney met with Trump, he said their relationship would be a problem. "I'm very attracted to your girlfriend," Trump told Houraney, according to the column.
Harth told Kristof that she did not want to lose the business opportunity so she kept meeting with Trump, despite him trying to coerce her into what she said would resemble a "wrestling match." At one point, Harth said, she made herself vomit in order to defend herself, but added that Trump was never violent and she felt that he believed she was genuinely interested in him sexually.
"His mind was in a totally different place than mine," she said.
"He thinks he is God's gift to women."
Kristof writes that Harth and Houraney were interviewed separately and gave nearly identical accounts. He said the details also line up with court documents from the lawsuits.
Later, after Harth divorced her husband, Trump began calling her, and they ultimately began dating. Kristof said he pressed her on why she would agree to date Trump, given the behavior she alleges.
“I was scared, thinking, ‘what am I going to do now?’” she said. “When he called me and tried to work on me again, I was thinking maybe I should give this a try, maybe if he’s still working on me, I should give this rich guy a chance.”
The two broke up in 1998, according to Harth, before Trump began going out with his current wife, Melania Trump.
Kristof had planned to run the column on Sunday, he said on Twitter, but published it in light of Friday afternoon's release of video depicting Trump making lewd comments about women. In the audio, Trump said that women will let him "do anything" because he's famous.
"You know I'm automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It's like a magnet. Just kiss. I don't even wait. And when you're a star they let you do it. You can do anything,"
"Grab them by the p----."
http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/299967-former-trump-girlfriend-makes-groping-allegations-in
