Donald Trump on Thursday vowed to release “substantial evidence” in the near future that would refute this week’s sexual assault claims from at least 10 women.
At a rally in Florida, Trump vigorously denied separate reports by the New York Times, People Magazine, Buzzfeed and the Palm Beach Post, in which various women accused him of touching them sexually without their consent, groping them and, in one case, forcing himself on a reporter at his Mar-a-Lago resort in West Palm Beach.
“These claims are all fabricated. They’re pure fiction and they are outright lies,” Trump charged. “These events never ever happened [and] the claims are preposterous, ludicrous, and defy truth, common sense and logic.”
“For them,” Trump said of the media, “it’s a war. And for them, nothing at all is out of bounds.”
Trump, who ordered his attorneys to draft a defamation lawsuit against the Times late Wednesday night, said his campaign has already gathered “substantial evidence to dispute these lies and it will be made public in an appropriate way and at an appropriate time very soon.”
Trump claimed the allegations against him are part of a coordinated effort to divert the attention of voters away from the damaging information against Hillary Clinton contained in thousands of illegally-obtained emails that have been released by WikiLeaks.
“It’s no coincidence that these attacks come at the exact same moment and altogether at the same time as WikiLeaks releases documents exposing the massive corruption of the Clinton machine,” he told his supporters. The former secretary of state’s “most powerful weapon” is the “corporate media,” Trump said.
“The corporate media in our country is no longer involved in journalism,” said the GOP nominee. “They’re a political special interest no different than any lobbyist or special entity with a total political agenda, and the agenda is not for you, it’s for themselves.”
“Their agenda is to elect crooked Hillary at any cost, at any price no matter how many lives they destroy,” Trump riffed. “They will attack you, they will slander you, they will seek to destroy your career and your family. They will seek to destroy everything about you, including your reputation. They will lie, lie, lie and then again, they will do worse than that.”
“They will do whatever’s necessary,” said an exasperated Trump.
The Trump campaign did not return the Washington Examiner’s request for additional details about the evidence the candidate claimed he has compiled or when it might be released.
Hours before Trump arrived for his rally on Friday, the Times’ special counsel, David McCraw, rejected the campaign’s request for a retraction and its threats of legal action.
“If Mr. Trump disagrees, if he believes American citizens had no right to hear what these women had to say and that the law of this country forces us and those who would dare to criticize him to stand silent or be punished, we welcome the opportunity to have a court set him straight,” the Times’ lawyer wrote.
In response, Trump described the Times as “fighting desperately for its relevance and financial stability.”
