A writer claims that US President Donald Trump and former CBS TV head Les Moonves both assaulted her, in separate incidents, in the 1990s.
In a cover story for New York magazine, an excerpt from her book What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal, writer and columnist E Jean Carroll alleges that Trump assaulted her after following her into a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman in late 1995 or early 1996.
"The next moment, still wearing correct business attire, shirt, tie, suit jacket, overcoat, he opens the overcoat, unzips his pants, and, forcing his fingers around my private area, thrusts his penis halfway - or completely, I'm not certain - inside me," she wrote.
"It turns into a colossal struggle."
Carroll said she "finally get(s) a knee up high enough to push him out and off and I turn, open the door, and run out of the dressing room."
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Trump rejected the claims, saying he's never met Carroll - despite the New York article including a photo of the pair together.
"Shame on those who make up false stories of assault to try to get publicity for themselves, or sell a book, or carry out a political agenda," Trump said in a statement.
"It's just as bad for people to believe it, particularly when there is zero evidence. Worse still for a dying publication to try to prop itself up by peddling fake news - it's an epidemic."
He suggested his political opponents could be behind the claims.
The second accusation
The alleged Moonves assault occurred in the late '90s after she interviewed the then-president of CBS Entertainment for an Esquire story, she details in the piece.
She said Moonves followed her into an elevator at the Hotel Nikko in Beverly Hills, where the interview took place, and told her she was "smart enough to choose an out-of-the-way hotel".
"I don't know how many apertures and openings you possess, Reader, but Moonves, with his arms squirming and poking and goosing and scooping and pricking and prodding and jabbing, is looking for fissures I don't even know I own, and - by God! - I am not certain that even if I pull off one of his arms it won't crawl after me and attack me in my hotel bed," wrote Carroll.
"Hell, I am thrilled I escape before he expels his ink."
The New York story notes that Moonves issued a statement in which he "emphatically denies" the incident.
The former CBS chairman and CEO was ousted from the entertainment conglomerate last year after a number of sexual misconduct allegations came to light in the New Yorker.
For the Esquire piece, 'Dangerous Minds', which ran in February 1997, Carroll said that she did not mention the incident in the resulting article.
"I am a member of the Silent Generation," she said.
"We do not flap our gums. We laugh it off and get on with life."
Trump was caught on tape in 2005 boasting of grabbing women by their genitals and kissing them without permission.
When the tape became public weeks before the November 2016 general election, Trump said he never acted in any of the ways described on the tape, and described it as just "locker-room talk".
Reuters / Newshub.
