Trump denies sexually assaulting woman
WASHINGTON: United States President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign yesterday rejected as false a Guardian newspaper report in which a former model accused the New York real estate developer of sexually assaulting and groping her at the US Open tennis tournament in 1997.
Amy Dorris told the newspaper in an interview Trump assaulted her outside a bathroom in his VIP box at the tournament that year. She was 24 at the time, the newspaper said.
‘‘He just shoved his tongue down my throat and I was pushing him off. And then that’s when his grip became tighter and his hands were very gropey and all over my butt, my breasts, my back, everything,’’ the newspaper quoted Dorris as saying.
The president’s reelection campaign yesterday said the allegations were not true.
‘‘The allegations are totally false. We will consider every legal means available to hold The Guardian accountable for its malicious publication of this unsubstantiated story,’’ a legal adviser to Trump’s campaign, Jenna Ellis, said.
The newspaper published photos it said were provided by Dorris showing her with Trump and said it interviewed several people whom Dorris confided in at the time of the incident. It said in total she provided six photos showing the two together as well as her ticket to the tournament on the day she said the incident occurred.
Trump has faced a number of allegations of sexual misconduct prior to his time in office.
Dorris, a mother of twins, told the newspaper she considered coming forward in 2016 but decided against doing so partly out of fears for her family.
‘‘Now I feel like my girls are about to turn 13 years old and I want them to know that you don’t let anybody do anything to you that you don’t want.’’
A former White House aide who helped coordinate the Trump Administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic sharply criticised the president in a video released yesterday and said she planned to vote for Democrat Joe Biden.
Olivia Troye, who was an aide to Vicepresident Mike Pence, served as a top organiser for the White House Coronavirus Task Force, which Pence leads.
A lifelong Republican, Troye, who left the White House in July, said in a video released by the group Republican Voters Against Trump that the Administration knew around midFebruary that Covid19 would become a big pandemic in the United States.
‘‘But the president didn’t want to hear that because his biggest concern was that we were in an election year and how was this going to affect what he considered to be his record of success,’’ she said.
Troye said it was shocking to see Trump, who downplayed the virus in its early stages, referring to it as a hoax and saying everything would be OK.
Trump will not travel to New York on Wednesday (NZT) for his speech to the United Nations General Assembly, but will deliver the address from the White House, his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, said yesterday.
‘‘He’s not going,’’ Meadows told reporters as Trump flew to Wisconsin for a campaign rally.
UN Secretarygeneral Antonio Guterres suggested in May that leaders send video statements to the annual highlevel gathering instead of travelling due to the coronavirus pandemic. — Reuters