Trump accused of groping a woman in 1993 while Jeffrey Epstein watched

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Trump accused of groping a woman in 1993 while Jeffrey Epstein watched

2024-10-26 08:03 Last Updated At：08:11

WASHINGTON (AP) — Stacey Williams is accusing former President Donald Trump of groping her at Trump Tower in early 1993 as disgraced hedge fund manager Jeffrey Epstein watched.

The former model initially made the allegation on Monday during a video chat of sexual violence survivors supporting Vice President Kamala Harris ' campaign. In an interview Friday with The Associated Press, she described walking down New York City's Fifth Avenue with Epstein, whom she was seeing at the time, when he suggested they visit Trump in his namesake tower.

As soon as Trump saw her, she said, he “had his arms around me and pulled me into him.”

“Then he started groping me. He started rubbing his hands up and down my body. He touched my breasts. He touched my waist. He touched my butt,” she said. “And while his hands are on me, he’s continuing to have a conversation with Jeffrey who is, you know, standing across from us. And I just froze. I was so confused.”

Karoline Leavitt, a Trump spokeswoman, called the allegations “unequivocally false” and argued they were politically motivated.

The organizer of the Survivors for Kamala video call said this week’s meeting was not affiliated with the Harris campaign and was an outside gathering of sexual violence survivors and advocate organizations. The Harris campaign declined Friday to comment on the allegations. And Williams said while she is voting for Harris, she has not had any contact with the Democrat’s campaign or knowingly had contact with people associated with her run.

The allegation is the latest in a lengthy list of accusations made against Trump, including by E. Jean Carroll, who has been locked in a legal battle with the businessman-turned-president after a jury found him liable in 2023 for sexually assaulting the advice columnist in 1996 and later for defaming her. The allegations against Trump go back decades and include those described in the “Access Hollywood” tape, a 2005 video made public weeks before the 2016 election that showed the then-reality television star bragging about grabbing, forcibly kissing and sexually assaulting women.

In the interview, Williams said the encounter with Trump “felt orchestrated," like she got “walked in there for that moment and they both knew exactly what they were doing.”

“I was just like this, you know, thing to be played with over some sort of twisted game or a bet or something,” she added.

At the time of the alleged incident, Trump was in his mid-40s, while Williams was in her mid-20s. Williams said she recalled “an assistant who had walked by a couple of times” and whom she had been introduced to, but the encounter was primarily just her, Trump and Epstein. In total, she said, the encounter lasted around “about five minutes, maybe a little longer, definitely less than 10 minutes. ”

While Epstein was conversational and said nothing to Trump in the moment, Williams recalls his “energy” changing when they got in the elevator to leave.

“He wasn’t making eye contact with me. He seemed like he was seething, like he was really angry,” she said. “And my heart was still pounding and I was still confused.”

When the two got to the street, she said: “The first thing he said was, ‘Why did you let him do that?’ And he berated me. ... Of course, I immediately then felt ashamed."

The two went in different directions after that encounter — “I went downtown, he went uptown,” she said — and it was then that Williams said she really began to absorb what happened.

On the call earlier in the week, Williams added that “not long after” that meeting in Trump Tower she received a postcard from Trump. Williams said her agent received the postcard, via courier, from Trump.

Williams' team provided the AP with images of the postcard. One side is a photo of Palm Beach and Mar-a-Lago, the former president’s resort in Florida, and the other side is writing allegedly from Trump. “Stacey, your home away from home. Love, Donald,” reads the postcard.

Williams said her encounter with Trump was the third — and final — time she had met Trump. The two had met earlier at a Christmas party that the businessman had thrown in 1992, but after their encounter in early 1993, the model had “such an aversion to running into him after that. I never wanted to be around him again, ever.” Williams said she saw Epstein “one or two more times" after the 1993 encounter with Trump.

Although Trump has sought to distance himself from Epstein in recent years, he told New York Magazine in 2002 that he had known “Jeff” for 15 years.

“Terrific guy,” Trump told the magazine. “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it — Jeffrey enjoys his social life.”

The reason Williams says she is coming forward now is because she decided to say in a recently premiered documentary called “Beyond the Gaze” that she was groped by a former president in front of Jeffrey Epstein, according to a person close to Williams who requested anonymity to describe her private thinking. She did not name Trump in the interview, but found out only a few weeks ago that the comment would be included in the documentary, the person said, so Williams thought it was time to speak out because of the attention the comment would likely receive.

Williams said that when the “Access Hollywood” tape came out, she thought, “Finally everyone’s going to find out what a freaky guy this is, that he does stuff like this.”

“I had an urge to sort of tell the story. But, you know, as the mother of a young child, I wasn’t going to bring that into my life,” she said Friday.

When Trump went on to win the election, however, Williams said she was “sickened.”

“It was beyond beyond comprehension ... just like we are in the upside down,” she said.

Mourners gather to mark a year since Maine's deadliest mass shooting

2024-10-26 08:08 Last Updated At：08:10

LEWISTON, Maine (AP) — Elizabeth Seal, whose husband Joshua was killed in the deadliest shooting in Maine history, told a crowd of mourners Friday that the tragedy that rocked their city a year ago also created a community that has only grown stronger with time.

“And these connections, just like a spiderweb, are beautiful. I wish it didn’t take a tragedy for me to discover these connections,” Seal said through an American Sign Language interpreter, adding that the community would “forever be Lewiston strong.”

Seal made the remarks at a memorial service that drew more than 1,000 people to the city’s hockey arena The Colisée, where Maine residents whose sense of safety was shattered last year by the mass shooting marked the anniversary.

The killings of 18 people by an Army reservist in Lewiston drove home the stark reality that no corner of the country is safe from gun violence, including a state where people often boast of the low crime rate.

Mourners held a moment of silence for the victims at 6:56 p.m. Friday — the exact moment of the mass shooting one year ago.

At the event, some people clutched teddy bears handed out by the American Red Cross. At the front of the stage were 18 chairs, each with a blue heart containing a victim’s name, along with a candle and white flowers. Names of each victim were read aloud with an image projected onto video screens.

Outside the event space, a local museum was collecting mementos and other items related to the tragedy. Among the items left behind was a single shoe from a survivor who lost the shoe’s mate on the night of the shooting. Other items included a pair of bowling shoes.

Earlier Friday, Arthur Barnard, the father of shooting victim Artie Strout, said it was a day of grieving for his family and others but also a day of action in the campaign for tougher risk protection orders in the state.

“Nothing can bring Artie back. But we can try to ensure no other family has to go through what mine has,” Barnard said in a statement.

The shootings on Oct. 25, 2023, happened at a bowling alley and a cornhole tournament hosted by a bar and grill. The shooter died by suicide, and his body was found two days later.

At the high school, which became a command post with helicopters using athletic fields and hundreds of police vehicles in the parking lot, students marked the anniversary with a moment of silence.

“We will never forget the unimaginable pain and loss that stems from that terrible day,” Superintendent Jake Langlais said in a statement. But, he added, “a lot of good has happened since that terrible day.”

Justin Juray, owner of the Just-In-Time Recreation bowling alley where the shooting began, said the venue would close for the day Friday to let staff be with their families.

“We don’t need work to add to their stress,” he said. Juray and his wife, Samantha, reopened the bowling alley in May, six months after the shooting. Two staff members were among the eight people killed there.

All told, more than 130 people were present at the two sites, according to the state’s director of victim services. In addition to the 18 killed, there were 13 wounded by gunfire and 20 non-shooting injuries.

Seal and dozens of other survivors and relatives of victims recently began the formal process of suing the U.S. Army for what they say was a failure to act to stop the 40-year-old reservist, Robert Card.

Vice President Kamala Harris issued a statement Friday saying the Lewiston community has "responded by reminding the nation of the unacceptable fact that far too many families have experienced the tremendous pain and trauma caused by the epidemic of gun violence."

At the state level, the Maine Legislature responded to the shootings by passing new gun laws that bolstered the state’s “yellow flag” law, criminalized the transfer of guns to prohibited people and expanded funding for mental health crisis care.

Associated Press visual journalists Robert F. Bukaty, Rodrique Ngowi and Nick Perry contributed to this report.