Story highlights
Trump called accusations of sexual assault: 'totally and absolutely false'
Stoynoff had been writing a profile about Trump's first anniversary with wife, Melania
Donald Trump on Thursday adamantly denied claims he forced himself on a People Magazine journalist more than a decade ago, responding to her accusation of sexual assault by saying, “Look at her … I don’t think so.”
Trump used a rally in Florida to hit back at allegations of sexual misconduct, including a People Magazine report, in which one of its writers, Natasha Stoynoff, claimed she had been physically attacked by Trump while on assignment at his Mar-A-Lago property in December 2005.
“Why didn’t they make it part of the story? I was one of the biggest stars on television with ‘The Apprentice’ and it would have been one of the biggest stories of the year,” Trump said during an event in West Palm Beach.
“And by the way, the area was a public area, people all over the place,” he added. “Take a look, you take a look. Look at her, look at her words, you tell me what you think. I don’t think so.”
Stoynoff had been sent to Florida to write a profile about Trump’s first anniversary with his wife, Melania, who would have been pregnant with the couple’s son Barron at the time of the alleged incident.
CNN has not yet independently verified Stoynoff’s account. Trump’s campaign told People Magazine: “This never happened. There is no merit or veracity to this fabricated story.”
Several stories of Trump’s alleged mistreatment of women have surfaced since the second presidential debate, in which Trump said his braggadocious comments in the 2005 “Access Hollywood” footage were just words, not action.
Trump on Thursday also slammed Jessica Leeds and Rachel Crooks’s claims of sexual assault that were reported in The New York Times as “totally and absolutely false,” “pure fiction” and “outright lies.”