Former model Stacey Williams is latest woman to accuse Trump of sexual misconduct : NPR

Another woman has accused Donald Trump of sexual misconduct, adding to a list of more than a dozen women who have accused the former president of inappropriate sexual behavior.

Stacey Williams, a former Sports Illustrated model, claims Trump groped her in 1993, while Jeffrey Epstein, who was later convicted of sex offenses, looked on. She recounted the incident to CNN this week, as well as on a Zoom call with Survivors for Kamala, a group that’s unaffiliated with the campaign.

“The second he was in front of me, he pulled me into him, and his hands were just on me and didn’t come off,” she told CNN in an interview.

“Then the hands started moving, and they were on the side of my breasts, on my hips, back down to my butt … they were just on me the whole time.”

In a statement, Trump campaign National Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt denied the allegations on Trump’s behalf.

“It’s obvious this fake story was contrived by the Harris campaign to distract from the deeply concerning and newly unearthed allegations” about Harris’ husband, Doug Emhoff, Leavitt wrote. Emhoff has been accused of striking an ex-girlfriend in 2012. The Harris campaign has denied this.

“Fake allegations like this are a disservice to women who are truly victims of assault,” Leavitt added.

The alleged incident between Trump and Williams took place while Williams was dating Epstein, who was, in the 1980s and 1990s, a friend of Trump’s. Epstein had taken Williams to Trump Tower to meet Trump, and she says Trump immediately started groping her.

“This context made no sense because the hands were on me, and then he and Jeffrey just kept talking and looking at each other and smiling,” she said.

“I just had this really, like, sickening feeling that it was coordinated — that somehow the whole thing was, I was rolled in there like a piece of meat for some kind of weird, twisted game.”

Williams also says she received a postcard from Trump shortly after the encounter, where he wrote that Palm Beach, Fla. — site of what’s now his Mar-a-Lago Club — was her “home away from home.”

She told CNN that she didn’t talk about the incident for a long time, out of shame.

“I felt a wave of shame, and I just couldn’t think about it, face it, talk about it for a very long time. I put it in a little box inside of me, turned the key, locked it,” she said.

Many victims of sexual violence remain quiet long after those incidents occur.

Williams joins a list of women who have accused Trump of sexual assault and other forms of sexual misconduct. Trump has denied all of these allegations.

In addition, Trump bragged about groping and kissing women in the Access Hollywood tape, leaked one month before the 2016 election.

With just over a week until Election Day 2024, polls suggest that the electorate could have the widest gender gap in modern election history. Women voters preferred Harris by 18 points in the latest NPR Marist PBS NewsHour poll, while men voters preferred Trump by 16 points.

It’s unclear how much an allegation like this could sway voters; the Access Hollywood tape’s effects have been debated for years, and Trump did ultimately win that close race. In addition, most voters have their minds made up. This year’s polls have been remarkably stable in the months since Harris entered the race.