Donald Trump Accused of Sexual Misconduct by Former Campaign Staffer

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published 26 February 2019

In a story in the Washington Post, a former campaign staffer named Alva Johnson has detailed a lawsuit in which she alleges that then-candidate Donald Trump made unwanted sexual contact with her while on the campaign trail. According to the Post, Johnson, an event planner from Alabama, approached lawyers in June of last year about the incident, though she’d considered coming forward since October 2016. She said it took her so long because she “tried to let [the incident] go,” but that when she realized the alleged behavior seemed to fit a pattern of Mr. Trump’s, she decided to make her case public.

The allegation hems close to what previous Trump accusers have detailed. On August 24, 2016, a few months before he would win the election, Johnson was working at a Trump campaign event in Tampa, Florida. According to the Post, Johnson led a group of volunteers into an RV to meet the candidate, and on the way out he approached her. Here’s the Post:

The White House, through Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, denied the allegations, with Sanders calling them “off-base and unfounded.” The two women who Johnson said witnessed the encounter denied seeing any inappropriate behavior. But family members and Johnson’s boyfriend remember her shock when she called them about the incident when it happened, and the Post looked at notes from a therapist who saw Johnson and which corroborate her version of events.

The allegation mirrors what Trump would be heard saying on the now-infamous, circa-2005 Access Hollywood tapes, which came to light six weeks after the alleged incident: “I just start kissing them...Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it.” (You may recall that he also said some other things.)

Further, this allegation is not far from what Summer Zervos—the former Apprentice contestant who filed a defamation lawsuit against Trump—has alleged. Zervos' allegations include unwanted kissing and groping (you can read them in further detail at NBC News, here). And, in fact, Zervos and Johnson are among at least 19 women who have come forward to accuse Trump of sexual misconduct since the 1980s.

With Mueller’s investigation, the Zervos case, and the New York Attorney General investigation into Trump’s foundation, the President has a lot of legal worries at the moment. Though these allegations of unwanted sexual advances aren’t new, they remain a focal point in a presidency that has been marked by obfuscation and outright lying. The extent to which Trump allegedly harassed and humiliated women may never be fully understood, but it’s admirable that women like Johnson are still willing to come forward to accuse a powerful man.

You can read the Post story in full here.

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Cady has been a writer and editor in Brooklyn for about 10 years. While her earlier career focused primarily on culture and music, her stories—both those she edited and those she wrote—over the last few years have tended to focus on environmentalism, reproductive rights, and feminist issues. She primarily contributes as a freelancer journalist on these subjects while pursuing her degrees. She held staff positions working in both print and online media, at Rolling Stone and Newsweek, and continued this work as a senior editor, first at Glamour until 2018, and then at Marie Claire magazine. She received her Master's in Environmental Conservation Education at New York University in 2021, and is now working toward her JF and Environmental Law Certificate at Elisabeth Haub School of Law in White Plains.

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