3rd woman accuses Bush of groping her

Novelist says incident occurred during event photo.

Another woman has come forward with allegations that George H.W. Bush groped her as she posed for a photo with the former president at an event.

Novelist Christina Baker Kline became the third woman this week to make such allegations, writing in Slate that Bush inappropriately touched her in April 2014 at a fundraiser for the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy. While she was taking a picture with Bush at the event, Kline wrote, Bush asked: “You wanna know my favorite book?”

“Yes, what is it?” she recalled responding. According to her article:

By now the photographer was readying the shot. My husband stood on one side of the wheelchair, and I stood on the other. President Bush put his arm around me, low on my back. His comic timing was impeccable. “David Cop-a-feel,” he said, and squeezed my butt, hard, just as the photographer snapped the photo. Instinctively, I swiped his hand away.

A friend of the Bush family, Kline said, later asked the best-selling author to be “discreet” about the incident.

Two other women, actresses Heather Lind and Jordana Grolnick, said earlier this week that they were groped by the 41st president while taking photos with him at other events. Both actresses said former first lady Barbara Bush saw the incidents.

Bush spokesman Jim McGrath said earlier this week that the former president occasionally “patted women’s rears,” but that he never intended to offend or act inappropriately. In a statement issued by McGrath, Bush apologized:

At age 93, President Bush has been confined to a wheelchair for roughly five years, so his arm falls on the lower waist of people with whom he takes pictures. To try to put people at ease, the president routinely tells the same joke — and on occasion, he has patted women’s rears in what he intended to be a good-natured manner. Some have seen it as innocent; others clearly view it as inappropriate. To anyone he has offended, President Bush apologizes most sincerely.

On Thursday, McGrath told The Post that Barbara Bush had no comment about the allegations from Lind and Grolnick. The spokesman could not be immediately reached for comment Friday about Kline’s allegation. But Slate said McGrath directed the magazine to his earlier statement.

Kline has written seven novels, including “Orphan Train” and “A Piece of the World.” In her piece for Slate, she wrote that she and her husband were posing next to Bush in his wheelchair when he beckoned Kline to come closer to him and told her, “It’s truly an honor to meet you” and “You’re beautiful.”

After making his “David Cop-a-feel” joke and touching her, Kline wrote, the former president laughed “like a mischievous boy.” She said she struggled to keep a smile on her face for the photo. Her husband, Kline wrote, stood on the other side of Bush’s wheelchair, smiling and unaware of what had happened.

Kline said she kept quiet about the incident because she didn’t want to face the scrutiny she knew the allegation would bring. She had been finishing a series of treatments for an invasive form of breast cancer a year earlier, and her hair had only just grown back, she said.

“I was vulnerable enough; I didn’t want to face the consequences of making such an accusation,” she wrote, citing President Trump’s comment that a woman wasn’t physically attractive enough to be sexually harassed by him.

George H.W. Bush