As Donald Trump reels from the fallout of his sexually aggressive comments caught on tape, two women alleged in a report published Wednesday that the GOP presidential nominee kissed and groped them years ago.
Jessica Leeds, 74, told The New York Times that Trump grabbed her breasts and tried to slip his hand up her skirt in the first-class cabin of a plane more than three decades ago.
"He was like an octopus," Leeds told the paper. "His hands were everywhere."
Rachel Crooks told The New York Times that Trump kissed her on the mouth when she introduced herself to him in front of an elevator in 2005 while she was working as a 22-year-old secretary in Trump Tower.
The Trump campaign denied the allegations, and accused the newspaper of trying to sink his candidacy.
"This entire article is fiction, and for The New York Times to launch a completely false, coordinated character assassination against Mr. Trump on a topic like this is dangerous," said Trump spokesman Jason Miller. "To reach back decades in an attempt to smear Mr. Trump trivializes sexual assault, and it sets a new low for where the media is willing to go in its efforts to determine this election."
The New York Times article said its reporters verified the stories with the women's friends and relatives, who told the paper they had heard the allegations previously.
The thrice-married Trump has a long history of making controversial remarks about women, their appearance, his attraction to them, and their weight.
But the issue came into heightened focus with the emergence of a 2005 "Access Hollywood" video Friday in which Trump says he can kiss women and grab their genitals without their consent because of his celebrity. He used vulgar language to describe women's anatomy and recounted his efforts to sleep with a married woman.
The political fallout was immediate. Dozens of Republican elected officials and others who had stood by Trump when he made controversial comments about women's appearances, Mexican immigrants, Muslims, the disabled and prisoners of war said they could no longer support him.
House Speaker Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, the nation's highest-ranking Republican, did not revoke his endorsement but said Monday that he would no longer defend his party's standard-bearer and would spend the rest of the election focused on down-ballot races.
Trump apologized for his remarks, but also dismissed them as "locker room" talk, including during Sunday's presidential debate with Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. A spokeswoman for her campaign said the new allegations squarely place the candidate's actions, not words, under scrutiny.
"This disturbing story sadly fits everything we know about the way Donald Trump has treated women," said Jennifer Palmieri. "These reports suggest that he lied on the debate stage and that the disgusting behavior he bragged about in the tape is more than just words."
The "Access Hollywood" video, first reported by The Washington Post, also led to a scurry among the news media for additional recordings of the GOP nominee, particularly unaired footage from his years of hosting "The Apprentice" on NBC.
Several reports have emerged since Friday, notably a CNN story on Sunday about newly unearthed Trump appearances on Howard Stern's radio show.
The GOP nominee told the shock jock he had taken part in threesomes and described going backstage at his beauty pageants when the contestants were naked.
The Palm Beach Post published a report Wednesday from a 36-year-old woman who said Trump grabbed her posterior when she was assisting a photographer friend hired by the businessman to document a Ray Charles concert at Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate 13 years ago.
On Wednesday, CBS News also reported on footage from an "Entertainment Tonight" Christmas special in 1992 in which Trump asks a 10-year-old girl if she is going to ride the escalator at Trump Tower. After the girl replies, "Yeah," Trump, then 46, says to the camera, "I am going to be dating her in 10 years. Can you believe it?"
