By Rachael Revesz | The Independent UK |
A woman has filed a lawsuit against Donald Trump, accusing him of sexual assault. The woman’s lawyer, Gloria Allred, told the press her client filed a lawsuit on Tuesday.
At least a dozen women previously accused the President-elect of sexual assault and he strongly denied all the claims.
The claims were made following the leak of a 2005 Hollywood Access tape, which showed Mr Trump bragging about grabbing women’s genitals and saying he could get away with it because he was a “star”.
The Trump team could not be immediately contacted for comment.
Ms Allred represented several of the women who made claims against the President-elect.
She and her client will both be present at a press conference at 2.30 ET to reveal the details of Mr Trump’s alleged inappropriate sexual misconduct and the lawsuit.
The 2005 video, which leaked in October and prompted outrage from Democrats and Republicans alike, forced Mr Trump to release a filmed statement near midnight that day to apologise for the remarks he made to former Access Hollywood host Billy Bush.
“I’ve said and done things I regret, and the words released today in a decade-old video are one of them,” he said.
“Anyone who knows me knows these words don’t reflect who I am. I said it, I was wrong, and I apologise.”
While his aides profusely apologised on his behalf, Mr Trump did not make any further apologies for his comments in the 2005 video.
Mr Bush was suspended from his job.
House speaker Paul Ryan cancelled a campaign event with Mr Trump that weekend and said, although he would not withdraw endorsement, he would no longer defend him.
“I am sickened by what I heard today,” he said in a statement. Mr Trump’s Vice President-elect Mike Pence was reportedly “beside himself” about the news.
Mr Trump continued on the campaign trail, blasting his accusers as “disgusting”, fame-hungry liars who were “sick” in the head and flatly denying any sexual misconduct.
The accusations dated back decades to when the President-elect was a rich businessman in Manhattan.
His wife, Melania Trump, dismissed the allegations, including one accusation that her husband assaulted a journalist from People magazine at his Mar-a-Lago resort while she, pregnant at the time, was in the house.
Mr Trump dismissed the claims from Natasha Stoynoff, telling the crowd at a Florida rally, “Look at her”, suggesting she was not attractive enough to be assaulted.
Mr Trump’s elder daughter, Ivanka Trump, insisted that her father “was not a groper”. She denied allegations that her father assaulted business partner Jill Harth in Ivanka’s room, while she was not in the house, in 1997.
Beauty pageant contestants accused Mr Trump of walking into their dressing room when they were not fully clothed, an activity that Mr Trump admitted to during an interview with radio host Howard Stern.
More than 50 per cent of white American women voted for Mr Trump in the election, suggesting they were willing to cast aside the comments and the lawsuits, but far fewer women of colour voted for him.
