Trump has repeatedly denied all accusations of inappropriate behavior.
ByMeghan Keneally
At least 18 women have accused Donald Trump of varying inappropriate behavior, including allegations of sexual harassment or sexual assault. All but two came forward with their accusations before or during his first bid for the White House.
The latest accusation comes from Amy Dorris, a former model who told The Guardian this week that Trump forcibly kissed and groped her at the U.S. Open tennis tournament in 1997, prompting a new denial from the Trump campaign with weeks to go until the 2020 election.
Trump has vehemently denied all of the various women’s accusations multiple times. In some cases, he and his team members have specifically denied individual accusations, but they have also repeatedly issued blanket denials against all the allegations, calling the women liars.
The topic resurfaced in fall 2018 while Trump defended his Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. In defending Kavanaugh against allegations of a sexual assault during high school, which Kavanaugh denied, Trump took the opportunity to push back against the various accusations against him that arose during his first presidential run.
At a Sept. 27, 2018, press conference, Trump brushed off what he called "false accusations" he has faced, saying that he was "accused by four or five women who got paid to make up stories about me."
"I mean, they made false statements about me, knowing they were false. I never met them. I never met these people. And, what did they do? What did they do? They took money in order to say bad things," Trump said at the press conference.
Previously, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said in December 2017 the accusations were essentially “litigated” during the campaign, with U.S. voters knowing of the accusations but choosing to vote for him anyway.
Only two of Trump’s accusers have taken legal action against him. For one the action pertains to her sexual misconduct allegations against him, while the other's involves an an ongoing defamation lawsuit relating to Trump’s calling his accusers liars and his alleged disparagement of the accusers during the 2016 campaign.
Here is a rundown of the individual accusations.
1. Jessica Leeds
Jessica Leeds alleged that Trump groped her on an airplane in the late 1970s, which the president has repeatedly denied.
Leeds went public in a New York Times article on Oct. 12, 2016 – discussing an alleged decades-old interaction with Trump -- four days after the release of a 2005 “Access Hollywood” recording in which he described women in vulgar terms. The Times article appeared three days after the second presidential debate, during which Trump denied ever kissing or groping women without consent.
Leeds has since reiterated her accusations to ABC News and has repeated it publicly, including at a news conference in December 2017 alongside two other accusers, calling on Congress to investigate the allegations against Trump.
Trump denied the allegations made by Leeds and by Rachel Crooks, another woman who spoke to The New York Times in the same 2016 article. He said "none of this ever took place" and threatened to sue the newspaper for reporting the story. No lawsuit has been filed.
The White House has also pointed to an October 2016 New York Post article in which a British man with a questionable past, including making unsubstantiated claims about British politicians’ behavior in the 1980s, challenged Leeds’ allegations, as an example of how the claims against the president have been refuted by eyewitnesses. The man, Anthony Gilberthorpe, told the paper he had been on the same flight and saw Leeds being “flirtatious.” Her account, he told the Post, was “wrong, wrong, wrong.”
The interview with Gilberthorpe had been arranged by the Trump campaign, the New York Post reported.
Leeds' accusations were the only ones that Trump specifically referenced during his Sept. 27 press conference.
"I've had many false charges; I had a woman sitting in an airplane and I attacked her while people were coming onto the plane. And I have a number-one bestseller out? I mean it was total phony story. There are many of them," Trump said at the press conference.
Trump's first book, "The Art of the Deal," was first published in 1987, which wouldn't have made him a best-selling author at the time of the alleged incident, which Leeds said took place in the late 1970s.
2. Kristin Anderson
Kristin Anderson told The Washington Post that Trump put his hand up her skirt to her underwear in the early 1990s.
After the story’s publication, ABC News spoke to a friend of Anderson, Brad Trent, who said he heard the account from Anderson the year of the alleged incident. Trent told ABC News that Anderson had told him she was sitting next to Trump at the old China Club bar in New York where he slid his hand up her thigh and “grabbed her p----.”
In a statement included in the Post story, then-Trump campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks disputed Anderson's accusations. “Mr. Trump strongly denies this phony allegation by someone looking to get some free publicity,” she said at the time. “It is totally ridiculous.”
3. Jill Harth
Jill Harth said she had dinner with Trump and her then-boyfriend, George Houraney, in 1992 when Trump allegedly tried to put his hands between her legs. She alleged he also tried to kiss her during a tour of his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida a month later when she and Houraney were there to celebrate solidifying a business contract.
Harth filed a lawsuit in 1997 alleging that Trump groped her and sexually harassed her, but she withdrew the suit, she says, as a condition of settling a separate financial dispute with him.
Harth’s lawsuit was reported in New York’s Daily News in 1997, and LawNewz published a post on its website in February 2016 revisiting the suit. After its publication, LawNewz reported that Trump subsequently called to deny the allegations. “It’s ridiculous, I never touched this woman,” LawNewz quoted Trump as saying.
In a New York Times article published a month before the 2016 election, Harth acknowledged that, even after she had accused Trump of sexual misconduct, she briefly dated him in 1998.
The Trump campaign also released emails from 2015 in which Harth, who now owns a cosmetics company, solicited the candidate for opportunities to do his hair and makeup. The Hill reported in December 2017 that Harth acknowledged sending the messages. That report came on the heels of another story in The Hill, which reported that after Harth publicly aired her allegations during the campaign, an unidentified donor came forward to pay the balance of a mortgage on Harth’s New York apartment.
Harth, in a statement published on the website of The Hill, said the stories were an attempt to malign her and her attorney, Lisa Bloom, characterizing the political journalism site as “an apologist for Trump and a rag for right-wing hit jobs."
Harth told ABC News in November 2017 she stands by her allegations but doesn’t want to speak any more about Trump.
4. Cathy Heller
Cathy Heller first spoke to The Guardian newspaper about an alleged incident she said happened at a Mother’s Day brunch at Mar-a-Lago. She repeated her claims to ABC News and said she believes it happened in 1997.
She put her hand out to say hello to Trump and he grabbed her unexpectedly and started to kiss her on the lips, Heller told ABC News. She said she pulled away and he said, “Oh, come on.” She said no but he grabbed her again and got near her lips, Heller told ABC News. She said this happened in front of her family.
The Guardian reported that Heller's family is in a dispute with Mar-a-Lago regarding their efforts to get refunds of dues, and that Cathy Heller was a Clinton supporter who donated the personal maximum of $2,700 to the Clinton campaign.
After her story appeared in The Guardian, the Trump campaign released a statement Oct. 15, 2016, saying that it was a “false accusation.”
“There is no way that something like this would have happened in a public place on Mother’s Day at Mr. Trump’s resort. It would have been the talk of Palm Beach for the past two decades,” the campaign’s then-senior communications adviser Jason Miller said.
In late-November 2017, after Trump began questioning the veracity of the 2005 Access Hollywood tape and commented on male public figures who had lost their jobs over sexual harassment allegations, Heller told People magazine that Trump “is a hypocrite.”
“I don’t think he should be calling out anyone for sexual harassment or sexual assault, but I don’t think he can control himself,” Heller told the magazine.
5. Temple Taggart McDowell
Temple Taggart was the 21-year-old Miss Utah when she participated in the Miss USA contest in 1997. She said Trump, who owned the pageant at the time, kissed her "directly on the lips.”
She first shared her story with The New York Times in May 2016, and Taggart, who now uses her married name of McDowell, reiterated her claims to ABC News through her lawyer, Gloria Allred. Trump denied the allegations to the Times, saying he is reluctant to kiss strangers on the lips.
"I don't even know who she is," Trump told NBC News in October 2016 in response to her allegations.
"She claims this took place in a public area. I never kissed her. I emphatically deny this ridiculous claim."
McDowell, through her attorney, reaffirmed her allegations to ABC News in November but declined to be interviewed.
6. Karena Virginia
Karena Virginia, a New York-area yoga instructor, said Trump approached her in 1998 outside the U.S. Open tennis tournament in New York while she was awaiting a car service, made unseemly comments about her appearance, grabbed her arm and groped her breast.
"He then walked up to me and reached his right arm and grabbed my right arm," she said at a news conference in October 2016. “Then his hand touched the right inside of my breast."
Virginia, who was 27 at the time of the alleged incident, said she flinched, and Trump said, "Don't you know who I am?"
She has since reiterated her claims to ABC News through her lawyer, Gloria Allred. Trump has never released a specific statement about her claims.
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