Кандидата в президенты США от Республиканской партии Дональда Трампа обвинили в том, что он "неподобающим образом касался" женщин во время встречи, передает The New York Times.
Как сообщает газета, скандальное заявление сделали две американки, случайно повстречавшиеся с миллиардером несколько лет назад. Как рассказала 74-летняя Джессика Лидс, около 30 лет назад она летела рядом с Трампом в Нью-Йорк в салоне первого класса. По ее словам, примерно через 45 минут после взлета миллиардер опустил подлокотник и начал к ней приставать. "Он был как осьминог. Его руки были везде", - вспоминает женщина. Из-за неподобающих действий соседа она вынуждена была пересесть в хвостовую часть воздушного судна, отмечает газета.
О другом случае сообщила изданию Рейчел Крукс. По ее словам, в 2005 году, когда ей было 22 года, она работала секретарем в компании Bayrock Group, офис которой находится в небоскребе Trump Tower на Манхеттене. Однажды утром она встретилась с миллиардером около лифта и, зная о том, что ее фирма ведет бизнес с Трампом, представилась. После рукопожатия бизнесмен не отпустил ее руку, а начал целовать в щеку. Затем, по словам Крукс, он поцеловал ее прямо в губы. "Это было очень неуместно", - заявила изданию девушка.
Как отмечает издание, женщины рассказали о случившемся с ними после того, как Трамп во время вторых дебатов заявил, что никогда не приставал к женщинам и не целовал их без разрешения, несмотря на то, что хвастался этим. Отвечая на запрос корреспондента газеты, кандидат в президенты от республиканцев заявил, что "такого никогда не было". Кроме того, предвыборный штаб республиканца назвал публикацию выдумкой.
"Вся эта статья выдумка. Опасно для New York Times заниматься полностью лживыми, скоординированными усилиями по очернению репутации господина Трампа на данную тему. Возвращаться на десятки лет назад в попытке оклеветать господина Трампа - это попытка опошлить понятие сексуального насилия, которая демонстрирует, как низко готовы действовать СМИ, чтобы предопределить результаты настоящих выборов", - говорится в заявлении.
Также штаб Трампа назвал "абсурдным" предположение, что Трамп мог вести себя подобным образом. Кроме того, авторы заявления обвинили газету в попытке подыграть кандидатуре кандидата от Демократической партии Хиллари Клинтон и отвлечь внимание от скандалов вокруг нее.
Напомним, 7 октября было опубликовано компрометирующее республиканца видео 11-летней давности, на котором Трамп в вульгарных выражениях хвастался приставанием к женщинам и утверждал, что ему все позволено, поскольку он "звезда". После публикации видео ряд видных республиканцев призвал Трампа снять свою кандидатуру с выборов президента, что не имеет прецедентов в новейшей политической истории США.
Two Women Say Donald Trump Touched Them Inappropriately
By MEGAN TWOHEY and MICHAEL BARBAROOCT. 12, 2016
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‘His Hands Were All Over Me’
Jessica Leeds, a businesswoman at a paper company, was sitting next to Donald J. Trump on a flight to New York in the early 1980s. She told The Times that he lifted the armrest and began to grope her. By NATALIA V. OSIPOVA on Publish Date October 12, 2016. Photo by George Etheredge for The New York Times. Watch in Times Video »
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Donald J. Trump was emphatic in the second presidential debate: Yes, he had boasted about kissing women without permission and grabbing their genitals. But he had never actually done those things, he said.
“No,” he declared under questioning on Sunday evening, “I have not.”
At that moment, sitting at home in Manhattan, Jessica Leeds, 74, felt he was lying to her face. “I wanted to punch the screen,” she said in an interview in her apartment.
More than three decades ago, when she was a traveling businesswoman at a paper company, Ms. Leeds said, she sat beside Mr. Trump in the first-class cabin of a flight to New York. They had never met before.
About 45 minutes after takeoff, she recalled, Mr. Trump lifted the armrest and began to touch her.
According to Ms. Leeds, Mr. Trump grabbed her breasts and tried to put his hand up her skirt.
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“He was like an octopus,” she said. “His hands were everywhere.”
She fled to the back of the plane. “It was an assault,” she said.
Ms. Leeds has told the story to at least four people close to her, who also spoke with The New York Times.
Mr. Trump’s claim that his crude words had never turned into actions was similarly infuriating to a woman watching on Sunday night in Ohio: Rachel Crooks.
Ms. Crooks was a 22-year-old receptionist at Bayrock Group, a real estate investment and development company in Trump Tower in Manhattan, when she encountered Mr. Trump outside an elevator in the building one morning in 2005.
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Ms. Leeds in 1978. She said unwanted advances from men were routine throughout her time in business in the 1970s and early 1980s. “We were taught it was our fault,” she said. Credit via Jessica Leeds
Aware that her company did business with Mr. Trump, she turned and introduced herself. They shook hands, but Mr. Trump would not let go, she said. Instead, he began kissing her cheeks. Then, she said, he “kissed me directly on the mouth.”
It didn’t feel like an accident, she said. It felt like a violation.
“It was so inappropriate,” Ms. Crooks recalled in an interview. “I was so upset that he thought I was so insignificant that he could do that.”
Shaken, Ms. Crooks returned to her desk and immediately called her sister, Brianne Webb, in the small town in Ohio where they grew up, and told her what had happened.
“She was very worked up about it,” said Ms. Webb, who recalled pressing her sister for details. “Being from a town of 1,600 people, being naïve, I was like ‘Are you sure he didn’t just miss trying to kiss you on the cheek?’ She said, ‘No, he kissed me on the mouth.’ I was like, ‘That is not normal.’”
In the days since Mr. Trump’s campaign was jolted by a 2005 recording that caught him bragging about pushing himself on women, he has insisted, as have his aides, that it was simply macho bluster. “It’s just words,” he has said repeatedly.
And his hope for salvaging his candidacy rests heavily on whether voters believe that claim.
They should not, say Ms. Leeds and Ms. Crooks, whose stories have never been made public before. And their accounts echo those of other women who have previously come forward, like Temple Taggart, a former Miss Utah, who said that Mr. Trump kissed her on the mouth more than once when she was a 21-year-old pageant contestant.
In a phone interview on Tuesday night, a highly agitated Mr. Trump denied every one of the women’s claims.
“None of this ever took place,” said Mr. Trump, who began shouting at the Times reporter who was questioning him. He said that The Times was making up the allegations to hurt him and that he would sue the news organization if it reported them.
“You are a disgusting human being,” he told the reporter as she questioned him about the women’s claims.
