Donald Trump did not grope a woman on an airplane flight to New York, according to a man who claims he was sitting near them on the circa 1980 flight.
“If there’s evidence Trump’s done it, sure, hang him from the post, but I was there, I was in a position to know that what she said was wrong, wrong, wrong,” Martin Gilberthorpe told the New York Post.
Gilberthorpe said he contacted the Trump campaign and offered to rebut the accusation, which was made by a Manhattan resident named Jessica Leeds, because she suggested that a nearby passenger observed Trump’s actions and did nothing to intervene. “That I sat there — eyes bulging — and not intervening is nonsense,” he said.
Gilberthorpe, saying he has a “good photographic memory,” did not provide the Post any evidence that he was on the plane with Trump and Leeds. “Gilberthorpe made headlines in 2014, when he went public with a claim that as a 17-year-old he procured boys (some who “could have been” underage”) for sex parties with high-ranking British politicians,” the Post noted.
Leeds is one of five women who have accused Trump of making unwanted sexual advances in the last several days, after he denied ever having groped a woman during second presidential debate on Sunday night. “I wanted to punch the screen,” Leeds said of her reaction to Trump’s debate comments.
Trump has denied any wrongdoing and threatened to sue the New York Times, which first reported Leeds’ accusation. “None of this ever took place,” he said.
