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Former Trump campaign staffer alleges he forcibly kissed her

Former Trump Campaign Staffer Alleges He Forcibly Kissed Her
Former Trump Campaign Staffer Alleges He Forcibly Kissed Her

A woman who worked on Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign sued him in federal court Monday, alleging that he forcibly kissed her at a campaign event in Florida months before the election.

In the lawsuit, the woman, Alva Johnson, who is black, also accused the president’s campaign of discriminating against her by paying her less than her white and male colleagues.

She joins more than a dozen other women who have publicly accused Trump of sexual misconduct.

According to the lawsuit, which was filed in U.S. District Court in Tampa, Florida, Trump kissed Johnson without her consent Aug. 24, 2016, in Tampa as he got out of a recreational vehicle during a campaign stop.

The encounter began when Johnson, who was in the RV, spoke with Trump as he made his way to the door of the vehicle, according to the suit. She told him that she had spent months on the road working for him and offered words of encouragement.

Trump then shook her hand firmly, promised that he wouldn’t forget her and leaned in “close enough that she could feel his breath on her skin,” according to her lawsuit. As soon as she realized what was happening, it states, Johnson turned her head, but Trump still kissed her on the corner of the mouth.

“It was distressing to her,” Hassan Zavareei, Johnson’s lawyer, said in an interview Monday. “Shortly afterwards, she called her significant other and her parents to tell them what had happened and was very upset and was in tears.”

All three confirmed to The Washington Post and The New Yorker that Johnson had indeed told them about the encounter at the time.

“I immediately felt violated because I wasn’t expecting it or wanting it,” Johnson told The Post.

Zavareei declined to make Johnson available, saying that he had decided to limit the number of interviews she would give.

White House officials disputed the account.

“This accusation is absurd on its face,” Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, said in a statement. “This never happened and is directly contradicted by multiple highly credible eyewitness accounts.”

According to the suit, two campaign officials, Karen Giorno and Pam Bondi, the Florida attorney general at the time, walked out of the vehicle after Trump. Neither seemed to acknowledge what had happened at the time, according to Johnson’s account, and both denied witnessing inappropriate behavior to The New Yorker and The Post.

Johnson, 43, an event planner and human relations consultant who lives in Alabama, decided to ignore the episode and move on, but changed her mind months later after The Washington Post published video that showed Trump using vulgar language to describe unwanted groping and kissing.

“You know, I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them,” he said in the video. “It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it.”

Retraumatized, Johnson contacted a lawyer and quit the campaign, according to the suit. The lawyer declined to represent her, but not because her case lacked merit. (The lawyer, whom The Post did not name, told the publication that he had declined the case “for business reasons.”)

After Trump was elected, Johnson again tried to put the episode behind her, but was prompted to act by what she saw as racist and sexist actions carried out by the Trump administration, her lawyer said.

“She did work for his campaign from the very beginning and did a lot of work to help him get elected and ultimately she just kind of felt very guilty and responsible for that,” Zavareei said. “She wanted to open up and be honest and tell her story and try and do what she could to redeem herself.”

Johnson’s claims are similar in nature to those of several other women. Temple Taggart, a former Miss Utah, told The Times in 2016 that Trump kissed her twice without consent. Rachel Crooks said he did the same to her years ago. In all, more than a dozen women have accused Trump of sexual misconduct — allegations that include groping and assault.

Trump has repeatedly dismissed such claims. “I’ve been a famous person for a long time,” he said at a news conference last fall. “But I’ve had a lot of false charges made against me, really false charges.”

The president’s re-election campaign also denied that the discrimination claim had merit.

“The Trump campaign has never discriminated based on race, ethnicity, gender or any other basis,” Kayleigh McEnany, national press secretary for Trump’s re-election campaign, said in a statement. “Any allegation suggesting otherwise is off-base and unfounded.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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