Jessica Leeds

• Jessica Leeds came forward after the second presidential debate to publicly recount her experience being sexually assaulted by Donald Trump on a commercial flight early in his career. “Donald J. Trump was emphatic in the second presidential debate: Yes, he had boasted about kissing women without permission and grabbing their genitals. But he had never actually done those things, he said. ‘No,’ he declared under questioning on Sunday evening, ‘I have not.’ At that moment, sitting at home in Manhattan, Jessica Leeds, 74, felt he was lying to her face. ‘I wanted to punch the screen,’ she said in an interview in her apartment. More than three decades ago, when she was a traveling businesswoman at a paper company, Ms. Leeds said, she sat beside Mr. Trump in the first-class cabin of a flight to New York. They had never met before. About 45 minutes after takeoff, she recalled, Mr. Trump lifted the armrest and began to touch her. According to Ms. Leeds, Mr. Trump grabbed her breasts and tried to put his hand up her skirt. ‘He was like an octopus,’ she said. ‘His hands were everywhere.’ She fled to the back of the plane. ‘It was an assault,’ she said. Ms. Leeds has told the story to at least four people close to her, who also spoke with The New York Times.” (New York Times, October 13, 2016)
• Trump tried to refute Leeds' story by unconvincingly suggesting that he only sexually assaults beautiful women and that he would not personally have found Leeds beautiful enough to sexually assault. “Jessica Leeds told the New York Times that she was seated next to Trump in the first-class cabin of an airplane in the early 1980s when he lifted the armrest between them and began groping her breasts and trying to put his hand up her skirt. ‘He was like an octopus,’ she told the Times. ‘His hands were everywhere.’ Leeds, who was 38 at the time, had never met Trump. Trump has denied the allegation and suggested that Leeds was not attractive enough to draw his attention. ‘'I was sitting with him on an airplane, and he went after me on the plane,'’ Trump said at a rally in North Carolina on Friday, mockingly impersonating the woman. ‘Yeah, I'm gonna go after - believe me, she would not be my first choice, that I can tell you.’” (Washington Post, October 18, 2016)