Woman accuses Trump
Speaking from a Manhattan conference room near Trump Towers Thursday, Karena Virginia, a yoga instructor and lifestyle coach who writes a lifestyle blog for the Huffington Post, told a news conference that Trump fondled her breast on the streets of New York in 1998.
Ms. Virginia, 28 at the time of her Trump encounter, said she was outside the US Open tennis tournament in Flushing, Queens in New York City waiting for her ride home. She noticed men nearby talking about her as if she was “an object” and said she recognized Donald Trump as being one of the men.
“I was surprised when I overheard him talking to the other men about me,” Ms. Virginia told the press conference. “He said: ‘Hey, look at this one, we haven’t seen her before. Look at those legs,’ as though I were an object rather than a person.
“He then walked up to me and reached out his right arm and grabbed my right arm,” she continued. “Then his hand touched the right side of my breast. I was in shock. I flinched.
“‘Don’t you know who I am? Don’t you know who I am?’ – that’s what he said to me,” she added. “I felt intimidated and I felt powerless. When my car pulled up and I got in, after I closed the door, my shock turned to shame.”
Now married and a mother, she was single at the time. Her husband, whom she’d told about the incident, has wondered why she dislikes shopping for dresses. She says it is because of her encounter with Trump and that since the experience she has felt shame about wearing a short dress.
Lewd Billy Bush tape
Gloria Allred, a Clinton delegate at the Democratic convention last July, arranged the press conference after Virginia contacted her. Allred, a lawyer, also arranged a conference last week for a former contestent on ‘The Apprentice’, Summer Zervos. Ms. Zervos, a Republican, said she was kissed and groped by Trump without her permission.
Trump claims the accusations of the plethora of women who have accused him of unwanted sexual groping, kissing and grabbing, are false. They came forward after a tape was released from 2005 in which Trump boasts of sexually assaulting women to TV personality Billy Bush.
At Wednesday’s debate Trump told moderator Chris Wallace the stories are being made up by women who crave attention. He also said the Democrats are involved in recruiting women to lie about him. At the press conference, Alldred was asked by reporters if she had contact with the Clinton campaign about Virginia or Zervos.
“One-hundred percent no,” she said.
Trump has said some of his accusers were not attactive enough for him to do such things. to, something his wife, Melania, has repeated. At the debate he denied suggesting the women were not attarctive enough for him, that despite recorded documentation of his saying such things.
Ms. Virginia released a statement in which she spoke directly to the GOP nominee for the White House:
“Mr. Trump, perhaps you do not remember me or what you did to me so many years ago. But I can assure you that I remember you and what you did to me as though it was yesterday. Your random moment of sexual pleasure came at my expense and affected me greatly.”
A spokeswoman for Trump, Jessica Ditto, called the accusations by Ms. Virginia a “coordinated, publicity seeking attack” and said the Clinton campaign will “stop at nothing to smear Mr. Trump.”
“Give me a break,” Ditto said.
