Donald Trump promised last Thursday to release legitimate proof in the near future that would exonerate himself from multiple allegations of sexual assault.
“We already have substantial evidence to dispute these lies, and it will be made public in an appropriate way and at an appropriate time — very soon,” said the Republican presidential hopeful at a rally in West Palm Beach, Fla.
“Stay tuned,” his running mate, Mike Pence, added the next day during an interview with CBS. “I know there’s more information that’s going to be coming out that will back his claim that this is all categorically false.”
One week later, it appears the “substantial evidence” Trump promised amounts to a New York Post article in which a British man claimed the GOP nominee did not grope a woman named Jessica Leeds during a cross-country flight in the 1980s, as she had recently alleged.
“I have only met this accuser once and frankly cannot imagine why she is seeking to make out that Trump made sexual advances on her,” 54-year-old Anthony Gilberthorpe told the Post.
He said Leeds “was the one being flirtatious” and suggested he would go so far as to “challenge her on the points she made” against Trump should they happen to meet again. Gilberthorpe’s interview with the Post was arranged by the campaign, and he had no eyewitnesses to corroborate his own account.
On Thursday, Trump faced his 10th accusation of sexual assault. This time from Karena Virginia, a yoga instructor, who claimed the billionaire grabbed her breast and made inappropriate comments about her appearance while she was waiting for a car outside the 1998 U.S. Open in Queens, N.Y.
“Give me a break,” Trump’s deputy communications director, Jessica Ditto, said in a statement hours after Virginia came forward. “Voters are tired of these circus-like antics and reject these fictional stories and the clear efforts to benefit Hillary Clinton.”
Ditto’s statement mirrors Trump’s own response to the allegations against him: He has mocked and insulted his accusers and then rejected the accusations as a “coordinated attack … orchestrated by the Clintons and their media allies.”
Top Trump supporters, like Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr., claim they’ve seen emails that prove the candidate’s innocence.
Indeed, aides to the GOP nominee released an email last Friday, in which former “Apprentice” contestant and Trump accuser Summer Zervos invited the billionaire to visit her restaurant in Huntington Beach, Calif.
Zervos responded: “I always complimented [Trump] and never said anything about what he had done to me at the Beverly Hills Hotel. However, this caused me a great deal of pain and anguish and I felt the need to confront Mr. Trump and ask him to apologize to me for his behavior. I also thought that he might have been embarrassed by his behavior and that this would provide him with an opportunity to clear the air.”
Trump campaign releases copy of email from Summer Zervos sent last April. pic.twitter.com/V3rAT53mAG
— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) October 15, 2016
The Trump campaign did not return the Washington Examiner’s request for comment about whether it has additional material evidence to disprove the women who have accused the candidate of sexual assault. Nor has the campaign released any proof since last Friday beyond Zervos’ email, an email from her cousin and Gilberthorpe’s account in the Post.
Below is a chronological timeline of the accusations that have been leveled against Trump:
