05:02 BST
Image source, Getty ImagesImage caption,
Donald Trump pictured in 1993
Stacey Williams, a former model, has alleged in an interview with the Guardian newspaper that she was groped by Donald Trump in 1993, a few months after she said she was introduced to him by the late Jeffrey Epstein.
The allegations, which were also made on a call organised by a group supporting Kamala Harris, were vehemently denied by the Trump campaign.
Williams said she had briefly dated Epstein and while the pair were on a walk in New York in 1993, they stopped by at Trump Tower at Epstein’s suggestion. Williams alleged that when Trump greeted her, he pulled her towards him and started groping her, which caused her to freeze in shock.
She said she believed she saw the two men smile at each other as it happened. Epstein killed himself in 2019 while awaiting trial over federal sex-trafficking charges.
A spokeswoman for the Trump campaign called the allegations by Williams “unequivocally false”.
“Fake allegations like this are a disservice to women who are truly victims of assault, like the women in Doug Emhoff’s past,” the campaign statement said.
The Trump campaign and allies have seized on news reports about Democratic nominee Kamala Harris’s husband Doug Emhoff, including that he had an extramarital affair during his first marriage.
Emhoff has admitted the affair, saying he and his first wife went “through some tough times on account of my actions”.
A spokesperson for Emhoff has separately denied a Daily Mail report that the vice-president’s husband once slapped a former girlfriend in public. They told Semafor it was “untrue” and that “any suggestion that he would or has ever hit a woman is false”.