If you're just tuning in, Donald Trump finally went too far when a tape emerged of the candidate (then a reality star) bragging about how he, "a star," can paw women's bodies and "they let you do it... You can do anything you want." This has not played well. Women responded, Twitter responded, even some Republicans responded.
Before this finally broke through and the GOP began defecting, other stories about Trump's past were overlooked. In part because there were always newer scandals to read about, in part because it took this long for everyone to believe Trump was this bad. Which is weird, because these three cases have been here the whole time:
1. In Trump's divorce proceedings, his wife accused him of rape and assault.
Under oath during divorce proceedings in 1990, Ivana Trump testified to a terrifying encounter which she described as "rape." After settling out of court, she signed a gag order and agreed to take back her accusation. Before that gag order went into effect, she did interviews for a 1993 book by Newsweek and Texas Monthly reporter Harry Hurt III, Lost Tycoon: The Many Lives of Donald J. Trump. Ivana may not be allowed to discuss it, but Hurt recalls what she told him,
The book, by former Texas Monthly and Newsweek reporter Harry Hurt III, described a harrowing scene. After a painful scalp reduction surgery to remove a bald spot, Donald Trump confronted his then-wife, who had previously used the same plastic surgeon.
“Your fucking doctor has ruined me!” Trump cried.
What followed was a “violent assault,” according to Lost Tycoon. Donald held back Ivana’s arms and began to pull out fistfuls of hair from her scalp, as if to mirror the pain he felt from his own operation. He tore off her clothes and unzipped his pants.
What follows next is graphic, and Hurt added, "according to versions she repeats to some of her closest confidantes, ‘he raped me.’” Trump denies this, of course, and his lawyers forced the publisher to insert this statement from Ivana on the same page:
During a deposition given by me in connection with my matrimonial case, I stated that my husband had raped me. On one occasion during 1989, Mr. Trump and I had marital relations in which he behaved very differently toward me than he had during our marriage. As a woman, I felt violated, as the love and tenderness, which he normally exhibited towards me, was absent.
Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen has also repeatedly harassed journalists who look into the story, telling reporters for The Daily Beast,
You write a story that has Mr. Trump’s name in it, with the word ‘rape,’ and I’m going to mess your life up… for as long as you’re on this frickin’ planet… you’re going to have judgments against you, so much money, you’ll never know how to get out from underneath it.
Ivana has since made domestic violence her preferred charity cause.
2. Jill Harth, who accused Trump of using his famous "grab em by the pussy" move in Ivanka's bedroom while her boyfriend was around the corner.
Trump attested in his Billy Bush tape that being married is no obstacle to him popping a Tic Tac and going for it, and also to his preferred molesting techniques. Jill Harth told the New York Daily News on October 8 about Trump's words, "that was exactly what he did to me."
Back in the early 90s, Hart and her then-boyfriend George Houraney owned American Dream Enterprise, a company that ran a "calendar girls" style pageant. Those calendar girls would also make appearances at car shows and other events.
When Trump wanted them to partner with his Atlantic City casinos, they were thrilled. Right from the beginning, however, there were problems. At their first meeting, according a 1997 sexual harassment suit by Hart, Trump asked Houraney "Are you sleeping with her?" When he was informed that they were dating, Trump continued, "You know, there’s going to be a problem. I’m very attracted to your girlfriend.” (Trump has denied this.)
There was, indeed, a problem:
“He was relentless,” Harth recalled in an interview, describing how on Dec. 12, 1992, he took the couple to dinner and a club — and then situated himself beside Harth and ran his hands up her skirt, to her crotch. “I didn’t know how to handle it. I would go away from him and say I have to go to the restroom. It was the escape route.”
Hart and Houraney wanted the deal, however, and tried to arrange their meetings with Trump to make such interactions impossible. Finally, however, they yielded to Trump's request to visit his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida. He also wanted them to bring the calendar girls.
While on a tour of the mansion, she says, Trump pulled her into Ivanka's empty room.
“I was admiring the decoration, and next thing I know he’s pushing me against a wall and has his hands all over me,” Harth told me. “He was trying to kiss me. I was freaking out.” Harth says she was desperately protesting, and finally managed to run out of the room and find the group again. She and Houraney left rather than stay the night, as they had intended.
The calendar girls were still at Mar-a-Lago, and according to the New York Times, one young woman had to throw him out of her room after an unexpected early-morning visit from the host. Doing business with Trump did not get easier.
That year, Harth continued to meet Trump for business — and, she says, he continued to try to jump her. “He’d say, ‘Let’s go in my room, I want to lie down,’ and he’d pull me along. I’d say, ‘I don’t want to lie down,’ and it would turn into a wrestling match. … I remember yelling, ‘I didn’t come here for this.’ He’d say, ‘Just calm down.’”
Later after she and Houraney broke up and she was depressed and broke, Trump pursued her. Admittedly somewhat out of self-interest, she agreed and they dated. Apparently, Trump's attention span drops off considerably once someone is with him voluntarily.
They dated for several months in 1998, when he was separated from [Marla] Maples, she says. In the end, he was a disappointing boyfriend, always watching television and rarely offering emotional support, she says.
“It was a hard divorce, and I was in a nonstop crying jag,” she recalls. “You know what he was thinking? He wanted me to get a boob job. He made an appointment for me to get a boob job, a doctor in Miami.”
You can read more about Harth's story in Nicholas Kristof's extensive piece published today in the New York Times.
3. Trump's ongoing child rape case.
You read that right. On October 7, while the Trump Tapes dominated the news, this story was filed on Dan Abrams' prominent law site LawNewz:
Federal Judge Ronnie Abrams has ordered a December status conference hearing after a woman, who calls herself “Jane Doe,” filed a lawsuit claiming that Trump raped her when she was 13 years old in the 1990s.
This is the third time this Jane Doe has filed this suit, but this time she has a new witness, "Joan Doe." According to Ms. Doe, this happened at a party hosted by Jeffrey Epstein, a financier once known for wild parties and now remembered for paying to have sex with children. (As Trump fans will point out, both Trump and Bill Clinton were friendly with Epstein and both flew on his notorious plane.)
There was already a previous witness, "Tiffany," who "provided an affidavit in the lawsuit, said she witnessed Trump and Epstein rape the plaintiff several times." Jane also claimed she worried aloud afterwards about pregnancy and "she said he angrily threw $100 bills at her and told her to “get a f***ing abortion.”"
Trump's lawyers have repeatedly denied the allegations and called them an "obvious publicity stunt." Before the case was filed this time following a dismissal last month, Trump's lawyer Thomas Meagher said of Jane Doe's lawyer, "in the event he decides to refile his complaint we will seek to have him sanctioned." This time, however, is the furthest the case has ever gotten.
In the wake of the Trump/Bush tape, however, even pro-Republican (although anti-Trump) sites like RedState are saying given what we now know about Trump, this is "not only believable but unsurprising."
It could be absolutely nothing, but we all know that old political saying, "if you're arguing why people should ignore a sexual assault case against a 13-year-old, you've already lost."