I'd never sexually assault a woman in a public place with security cameras says Trump as he claims media is ignoring how one accuser had her mortgage paid off by Clinton backer
- Rachel Crooks claims the president kissed her on the mouth in a Trump Tower elevator lobby in 2006
- Her accusation first came in 2016, just weeks before the presidential election
- She resurfaced in a front-page Washington Post story since she's running for a state legislative seat in Ohio
- Trump forcefully denied her account Tuesday, tweeting that he had never met her and it 'never happened'
- By tweeting about the allegation, Trump has brought far more attention to it, and to Crooks
- He also slammed the press for ignoring a story of one of his sexual misconduct accusers who was reportedly paid for telling her story
Donald Trump swatted away the latest accusation of sexual misconduct against him on Tuesday, claiming that a Washington Post story about a woman who has accused him of unwanted kissing is 'Fake News.'
Rachel Crooks, 35, is running for a seat in the Ohio legislature – mostly, she says, so she can have a platform to tell the story of a day when Trump mashed his face against hers without an invitation.
Trump himself pushed back on Tuesday, enlarging the story by tweeting about it.
'A woman I don’t know and, to the best of my knowledge, never met, is on the FRONT PAGE of the Fake News Washington Post saying I kissed her (for two minutes yet) in the lobby of Trump Tower 12 years ago. Never happened!' he wrote.
Donald Trump insisted Tuesday on Twitter that a woman's story of unwanted kissing in 2006 is 'fake news'
Rachel Crooks first claimed a few weeks before the 2016 election that Trump once forcibly kissed her in an elevator lobby at Trump Tower
'Who would do this in a public space with live security cameras running. Another False Accusation.'
Crooks recalled the alleged kiss in a group conversation witnessed by a Post reporter.
'It happened right by the elevators,' she said, talking about an encounter at Trump Tower at age 22, where she was working as a receptionist at Bayrock Group, a company Trump sometimes did business with.
'He started kissing me on one cheek, then the other cheek. He was talking to me in between kisses, asking where I was from, or if I wanted to be a model. He wouldn’t let go of my hand, and then he went right in and started kissing me on the lips.'
'It felt like a long kiss,' Crooks told the gathering, a confab of women intended to drum up support for her political campaign.
'The whole thing probably lasted two minutes, maybe less.'
Crooks first made her claim to The New York Times about four weeks before the 2016 election.
'It was so inappropriate,' Crooks recalled at the time. 'I was so upset that he thought I was so insignificant that he could do that.'
Crooks has said the incident happened in the elevator lobby near the Bayrock offices, in the early morning. It's a relatively secluded spot.
Trump's tweet placed her accusation in the 'lobby of Trump Tower,' a far more public location.
On Tuesday the president enlarged Crooks' claims by denying them forcefully, saying it 'never happened!'
Crooks has asked Trump in the past to find and release security-camera video from that day. His company has never responded to those requests.
Hours after Trump's tweets, she responded with her own.
'Please, by all means, share the footage from the hallway outside the 24th floor residential elevator bank on the morning of January 11, 2006,' she challenged the president. 'Let’s clear this up for everyone. It’s liars like you in politics that have prompted me to run for office myself.'
The tweet included a link to her campaign fundraising Web page.
Trump also complained on Tuesday that the Fox News Channel has been the only major cable network to cover the story one accuser who was reportedly offered a payoff from lawyer Lisa Bloom to tell her story publicly.
That woman is reportedly Jill Harth. Neither she nor Bloom has denied a financial transaction took place.
Crooks tweeted back at Trump, pinpointing the location of her claim and challenging him to release security footage; she also used the profile-enhancing tweet as a fundraising opportunity
Trump fumed on Tuesday about what he claims is a lack of media attention to the saga of Jill Harth (left), one of his accusers, who reportedly got a payoff arranged by feminist lawyer Lisa Bloom (right) in exchange for telling her story
'Why doesn’t @washingtonpost report the story of the women taking money to make up stories about me? One had her home mortgage paid off,' Trump tweeted.
'Only @FoxNews so reported...doesn’t fit the Mainstream Media narrative.'
A total of 19 women have claimed publicly that Trump subjected them in the past to sexual misconduct of some kind, running the gamut from harassment to assault.
His presidential campaign was roiled in its final days when the Post published audio from a 2005 taping of 'Access Hollywood,' in which the future president told host Billy Bush that he was 'automatically attracted to beautiful women. 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.'
Crooks' accusations date to the year after Trump made those comments.
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