At least 18 women have accused Donald Trump of varying inappropriate behavior, including allegations of sexual harassment or sexual assault. All but two came forward with their accusations before or during his first bid for the White House.
The latest accusation comes from Amy Dorris, a former model who told The Guardian this week that Trump forcibly kissed and groped her at the U.S. Open tennis tournament in 1997, prompting a new denial from the Trump campaign with weeks to go until the 2020 election.
Trump has vehemently denied all of the various women’s accusations multiple times. In some cases, he and his team members have specifically denied individual accusations, but they have also repeatedly issued blanket denials against all the allegations, calling the women liars.
The topic resurfaced in fall 2018 while Trump defended his Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. In defending Kavanaugh against allegations of a sexual assault during high school, which Kavanaugh denied, Trump took the opportunity to push back against the various accusations against him that arose during his first presidential run.
At a Sept. 27, 2018, press conference, Trump brushed off what he called "false accusations" he has faced, saying that he was "accused by four or five women who got paid to make up stories about me."
"I mean, they made false statements about me, knowing they were false. I never met them. I never met these people. And, what did they do? What did they do? They took money in order to say bad things," Trump said at the press conference.
Previously, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said in December 2017 the accusations were essentially “litigated” during the campaign, with U.S. voters knowing of the accusations but choosing to vote for him anyway.
Only two of Trump’s accusers have taken legal action against him. For one the action pertains to her sexual misconduct allegations against him, while the other's involves an an ongoing defamation lawsuit relating to Trump’s calling his accusers liars and his alleged disparagement of the accusers during the 2016 campaign.
Here is a rundown of the individual accusations.
Jessica Leeds alleged that Trump groped her on an airplane in the late 1970s, which the president has repeatedly denied.
Leeds went public in a New York Times article on Oct. 12, 2016 – discussing an alleged decades-old interaction with Trump -- four days after the release of a 2005 “Access Hollywood” recording in which he described women in vulgar terms. The Times article appeared three days after the second presidential debate, during which Trump denied ever kissing or groping women without consent.
Leeds has since reiterated her accusations to ABC News and has repeated it publicly, including at a news conference in December 2017 alongside two other accusers, calling on Congress to investigate the allegations against Trump.
Trump denied the allegations made by Leeds and by Rachel Crooks, another woman who spoke to The New York Times in the same 2016 article. He said "none of this ever took place" and threatened to sue the newspaper for reporting the story. No lawsuit has been filed.
The White House has also pointed to an October 2016 New York Post article in which a British man with a questionable past, including making unsubstantiated claims about British politicians’ behavior in the 1980s, challenged Leeds’ allegations, as an example of how the claims against the president have been refuted by eyewitnesses. The man, Anthony Gilberthorpe, told the paper he had been on the same flight and saw Leeds being “flirtatious.” Her account, he told the Post, was “wrong, wrong, wrong.”
The interview with Gilberthorpe had been arranged by the Trump campaign, the New York Post reported.
Leeds' accusations were the only ones that Trump specifically referenced during his Sept. 27 press conference.
"I've had many false charges; I had a woman sitting in an airplane and I attacked her while people were coming onto the plane. And I have a number-one bestseller out? I mean it was total phony story. There are many of them," Trump said at the press conference.
Trump's first book, "The Art of the Deal," was first published in 1987, which wouldn't have made him a best-selling author at the time of the alleged incident, which Leeds said took place in the late 1970s.
Kristin Anderson told The Washington Post that Trump put his hand up her skirt to her underwear in the early 1990s.
After the story’s publication, ABC News spoke to a friend of Anderson, Brad Trent, who said he heard the account from Anderson the year of the alleged incident. Trent told ABC News that Anderson had told him she was sitting next to Trump at the old China Club bar in New York where he slid his hand up her thigh and “grabbed her p----.”
In a statement included in the Post story, then-Trump campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks disputed Anderson's accusations. “Mr. Trump strongly denies this phony allegation by someone looking to get some free publicity,” she said at the time. “It is totally ridiculous.”
Jill Harth said she had dinner with Trump and her then-boyfriend, George Houraney, in 1992 when Trump allegedly tried to put his hands between her legs. She alleged he also tried to kiss her during a tour of his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida a month later when she and Houraney were there to celebrate solidifying a business contract.
Harth filed a lawsuit in 1997 alleging that Trump groped her and sexually harassed her, but she withdrew the suit, she says, as a condition of settling a separate financial dispute with him.
Harth’s lawsuit was reported in New York’s Daily News in 1997, and LawNewz published a post on its website in February 2016 revisiting the suit. After its publication, LawNewz reported that Trump subsequently called to deny the allegations. “It’s ridiculous, I never touched this woman,” LawNewz quoted Trump as saying.
In a New York Times article published a month before the 2016 election, Harth acknowledged that, even after she had accused Trump of sexual misconduct, she briefly dated him in 1998.
The Trump campaign also released emails from 2015 in which Harth, who now owns a cosmetics company, solicited the candidate for opportunities to do his hair and makeup. The Hill reported in December 2017 that Harth acknowledged sending the messages. That report came on the heels of another story in The Hill, which reported that after Harth publicly aired her allegations during the campaign, an unidentified donor came forward to pay the balance of a mortgage on Harth’s New York apartment.
Harth, in a statement published on the website of The Hill, said the stories were an attempt to malign her and her attorney, Lisa Bloom, characterizing the political journalism site as “an apologist for Trump and a rag for right-wing hit jobs."
Harth told ABC News in November 2017 she stands by her allegations but doesn’t want to speak any more about Trump.
Cathy Heller first spoke to The Guardian newspaper about an alleged incident she said happened at a Mother’s Day brunch at Mar-a-Lago. She repeated her claims to ABC News and said she believes it happened in 1997.
She put her hand out to say hello to Trump and he grabbed her unexpectedly and started to kiss her on the lips, Heller told ABC News. She said she pulled away and he said, “Oh, come on.” She said no but he grabbed her again and got near her lips, Heller told ABC News. She said this happened in front of her family.
The Guardian reported that Heller's family is in a dispute with Mar-a-Lago regarding their efforts to get refunds of dues, and that Cathy Heller was a Clinton supporter who donated the personal maximum of $2,700 to the Clinton campaign.
After her story appeared in The Guardian, the Trump campaign released a statement Oct. 15, 2016, saying that it was a “false accusation.”
“There is no way that something like this would have happened in a public place on Mother’s Day at Mr. Trump’s resort. It would have been the talk of Palm Beach for the past two decades,” the campaign’s then-senior communications adviser Jason Miller said.
In late-November 2017, after Trump began questioning the veracity of the 2005 Access Hollywood tape and commented on male public figures who had lost their jobs over sexual harassment allegations, Heller told People magazine that Trump “is a hypocrite.”
“I don’t think he should be calling out anyone for sexual harassment or sexual assault, but I don’t think he can control himself,” Heller told the magazine.
Temple Taggart was the 21-year-old Miss Utah when she participated in the Miss USA contest in 1997. She said Trump, who owned the pageant at the time, kissed her "directly on the lips.”
She first shared her story with The New York Times in May 2016, and Taggart, who now uses her married name of McDowell, reiterated her claims to ABC News through her lawyer, Gloria Allred. Trump denied the allegations to the Times, saying he is reluctant to kiss strangers on the lips.
"I don't even know who she is," Trump told NBC News in October 2016 in response to her allegations.
"She claims this took place in a public area. I never kissed her. I emphatically deny this ridiculous claim."
McDowell, through her attorney, reaffirmed her allegations to ABC News in November but declined to be interviewed.
Karena Virginia, a New York-area yoga instructor, said Trump approached her in 1998 outside the U.S. Open tennis tournament in New York while she was awaiting a car service, made unseemly comments about her appearance, grabbed her arm and groped her breast.
"He then walked up to me and reached his right arm and grabbed my right arm," she said at a news conference in October 2016. “Then his hand touched the right inside of my breast."
Virginia, who was 27 at the time of the alleged incident, said she flinched, and Trump said, "Don't you know who I am?"
She has since reiterated her claims to ABC News through her lawyer, Gloria Allred. Trump has never released a specific statement about her claims.
Bridget Sullivan, who was crowned Miss New Hampshire 2000, spoke publicly during the presidential campaign about how Trump came into the Miss Universe changing room while the contestants were naked.
“The time that he walked through the dressing rooms was really shocking. We were all naked,” she told Buzzfeed in May 2016.
CNN released recordings of a 2005 interview that Trump gave to radio host Howard Stern in which he talked about going backstage at pageants when the contestants were naked.
"No men are anywhere, and I’m allowed to go in, because I’m the owner of the pageant and therefore I’m inspecting it. ... ‘Is everyone OK’? You know, they’re standing there with no clothes. ‘Is everybody OK?’ And you see these incredible looking women, and so I sort of get away with things like that," Trump said in the recording.
Reached in November 2017, Sullivan declined to be interviewed. “I've said what I’ve needed to say,” she told ABC News.
Trump has never released a specific statement about her claims.
Former Miss Arizona Tasha Dixon says Trump walked into a dress rehearsal for a pageant in 2001 while the contestants were “half-naked’ and the women were told to “fawn all over him,” according to an interview Dixon gave to CBS Los Angeles station KCAL-TV in October of 2016.
Dixon, who says she was 18 at the time, said Trump came "strolling right in" during a dress rehearsal for the Miss USA pageant in 2001. She said it was the contestants' introduction to Trump and that the women were naked or half-naked, in a "very physically vulnerable position."
Dixon said she decided to speak out after hearing an old audio recording of Trump’s talking to Howard Stern about going backstage at pageants while contestants were naked or getting dressed.
Trump’s 2016 campaign team denied Dixon’s allegation.
“These accusations have no merit and have already been disproven by many other individuals who were present,” then-campaign adviser Jason Miller said. “When you see questionable attacks like this magically put out there in the final month of a presidential campaign, you have to ask yourself what the political motivations are and why the media is pushing it.”
Mindy McGillivray told The Palm Beach Post in October 2016 that Trump grabbed her rear end while she was working as a photographer's assistant at a 2003 event at Mar-a-Lago.
The photographer, Ken Davidoff, told the paper he vividly remembers McGillivray immediately pulling him aside to say, “Donald just grabbed my a--.”
Then Trump 2016 campaign spokeswoman Hicks told the paper that McGillivray's allegation “lacks any merit or veracity.”
The photographer's brother, Daryl Davidoff, told ABC News and other news organizations that he was also at Mar-a-Lago on the night in question and doesn’t believe McGillivray's story.
In October 2016, when reached by ABC News, Daryl Davidoff confirmed that McGillivray was working for Davidoff photography, their family business, the night she says she was groped by Trump, but he also said he never heard anything about Trump’s groping anyone. He said he doesn’t believe McGillivray’s story and his brother, Ken, hasn’t worked for the family photography business for years.
Daryl Davidoff also told The Palm Beach Post he believed McGillivray had made up the story as a publicity stunt. “Nobody saw it happen and she just wanted to be in the limelight,” he told the Post.
Ken Davidoff, in response to his brother’s comments, told The Palm Beach Post that he thought his brother was trying to discredit the story in order to prevent harm to the family business.
In December 2017, McGillivray reiterated her allegations to NBC, calling for a congressional ethics investigation during an appearance on “Megyn Kelly Today.” “I think it’s important that we hold this man to the highest of standards, and if 16 women have come forward, then why hasn’t anything been done? Where is our investigation? I want justice.”
Trump has never issued a specific statement about her allegation.
Rachel Crooks, a secretary who worked in Trump’s building, told The New York Times that when she first met Trump in 2005, he shook her hand, then kissed her on the cheeks and then on the lips, while outside an elevator at Trump Tower in New York City. Crooks says she immediately told her sister in Ohio about the encounter with Trump.
Shortly after The New York Times story was published in October 2016, ABC News reached Crooks’ sister Brianne Webb, who, as reported in the Times article, told ABC News that she was the first person her sister called after the alleged incident. Crooks was very upset, Webb said, and worked up about just meeting Trump and having him allegedly kiss her directly on the mouth. Webb also said Crooks never went to the authorities.
The Trump campaign issued a lengthy statement denying the allegation that both Crooks and Leeds made in The New York Times article.
“This entire article is fiction, and for the New York Times to launch a completely false, coordinated character assassination against Mr. Trump on a topic like this is dangerous,” then-campaign senior communications advisor Jason Miller said in the statement at the time. “To reach back decades in an attempt to smear Mr. Trump trivializes sexual assault, and it sets a new low for where the media is willing to go in its efforts to determine this election.”
Crooks ran and lost a 2018 bid for a seat in the Ohio state legislature, and during the campaign she continued to repeat her accusations against Trump. She was featured in The Washington Post, prompting Trump to respond on Twitter in February 2018.
"A woman I don’t know and, to the best of my knowledge, never met, is on the FRONT PAGE of the Fake News Washington Post saying I kissed her (for two minutes yet) in the lobby of Trump Tower 12 years ago. Never happened! Who would do this in a public space with live security cameras running. Another False Accusation. Why doesn’t @washingtonpost report the story of the women taking money to make up stories about me? One had her home mortgage paid off. Only @FoxNews so reported...doesn’t fit the Mainstream Media narrative," he wrote in two tweets.
ABC News reached out to the White House in February 2018 for any further comment on both Crooks’ claims and the accusations levied by the rest of the women on this list. The White House did not respond.
Natasha Stoynoff, a writer for People magazine, said Trump inappropriately touched her in 2005 when she was at Mar-a-Lago for an interview timed to coincide with the first anniversary of his marriage to Melania Trump.
Stoynoff wrote a first-person account of the alleged incident that was published in People in October 2016, saying he forced her against a wall and tried to kiss her during a break in the interview. The alleged attempted assault, Stoynoff wrote, was interrupted when Trump’s then-butler burst into the room.
The Trump campaign said the alleged incident “never happened. There is no merit or veracity to this fabricated story.” Trump himself tweeted, "Why didn’t the writer of this twelve year old article in People Magazine mention the ‘incident’ in her story. Because it did not happen!”
In her account of the story, Stoynoff said she later ran into Melania Trump in New York and it was a friendly encounter, though Melania Trump denied ever seeing her or having that interaction, and an attorney representing Melania Trump released a letter to People magazine demanding a retraction and an apology. People magazine said it stood by the story and did not issue a retraction.
After the publication of Stoynoff’s account, Trump’s former butler Tony Senecal also publicly refuted her allegations. “Never happened,” Senecal told ABC South Florida affiliate WPBF-TV.
A week later, People published a follow-up story quoting five colleagues and friends of Stoynoff who said the writer had told them about the alleged attack shortly after she returned from the assignment; it also quote a friend who says she was with Stoynoff when she later ran into Melania Trump in New York City.
ABC News left several messages seeking comment from Stoynoff but received no response.
Jennifer Murphy, a contestant on the fourth season of “The Apprentice,” the reality-TV show that Trump used to host, told British magazine Grazia that Trump kissed her on the lips after a job interview in 2005. After she was fired from the reality TV show, Murphy said, Trump followed up with her and said he wanted to offer her a job but could only do so after the finale had ended. Murphy told Grazia the alleged kissing incident took place during one of those post-show interviews.
"He walked me to the elevator, and I said goodbye. I was thinking, 'Oh, he’s going to hug me,’ but when he pulled my face in and gave me a smooch. I was like, ‘Oh kay.’ I didn’t know how to act. I was just a little taken aback and probably turned red. And I then I get into the elevator and thought, 'Huh, Donald Trump just kissed me on the lips,"' she told the magazine.
The Grazia article was published weeks before the election, and at the time, Murphy said, she still planned to vote for Trump.
"I don’t want him to ever feel I’m throwing him under the bus, because I’m not. ... I was surprised, but then it didn’t really bother me because I didn’t feel he was being degrading, or he was being dishonest to Melania," Murphy told Grazia.
Trump has not released any specific statement about her claims.
Adult film star Jessica Drake said Trump kissed her and two other women without their consent 10 years ago.
During an Oct. 22, 2016, news conference alongside her attorney Gloria Allred, the accuser provided a picture of her with Trump.
The Trump campaign called her allegations “totally false and ridiculous” and directly addressed the picture in a statement, saying, “The picture is one of thousands taken out of respect for people asking to have their picture taken with Mr. Trump.”
Drake said she met Trump at a 2006 golf tournament in Lake Tahoe and walked the course with him during the competition. She then was invited up to his hotel suite and brought two other women with her because "I didn't feel right going alone," Drake said during the news conference.
"When we entered the room, he grabbed each of us tightly in a hug and kissed each one of us without asking permission," Drake said.
She went on to say that after she and the other women left, she received a call from Trump asking her to come back and have dinner with him.
"Donald then asked me, 'What do you want? How much?'" Drake said.
Allred and Drake declined to provide names of people they said could back up the story. Allred told ABC News in November 2017 that Drake does not want to speak with any media.
In 2006, Ninni Laaksonen competed in Miss Universe as Miss Finland. She told Finnish newspaper Ilta-Sanomat that Trump squeezed her rear end after posing for a photo before an appearance on “The David Letterman Show.”
"Trump stood right next to me and suddenly he squeezed my butt. He really grabbed my butt," she told Ilta-Sanomat, according to a translation obtained by The Guardian.
ABC News contacted Laaksonen for comment in December 2017. She replied, “I have never commented on this, and I won’t. I wish that you respect my will to live a normal life without interference.”
Trump has never released a specific statement about her claims.
During the presidential campaign, Zervos, who was a competitor on the fifth season of "The Apprentice," came forward to allege that Trump abused his role as a potential employer, kissing her twice during a meeting at Trump Tower in New York, and later groping and kissing her in a California hotel room. Zervos said she did not report the alleged incidents to the authorities at the time.
“He grabbed my shoulder and began kissing me again aggressively and placed his hand on my breast,” Zervos said at an October 2016 news conference.
Zervos has since filed a lawsuit against Trump for alleged defamation after he called her and the other women accusing him liars. The suit was filed in state court in New York, three days before Trump’s inauguration.
In the lawsuit, Zervos' attorney wrote that while Trump said Zervos was lying, "it was Donald Trump who was lying when he falsely denied his predatory misconduct with Summer Zervos, and derided her for perpetrating a 'hoax' and making up a 'phony' story to get attention."
In March 2019, an appellate court in New York rejected Trump’s legal team’s argument that a sitting president cannot be sued .
His attorney Marc Kasowitz responded with a statement saying that Trump would be appealing to the state’s highest court.
In June 2016, former Miss Washington Cassandra Searles shared a post on Facebook that is no longer available publicly.
The post had a picture of the group of Miss Universe contestants from 2013 with Trump in the center. In the caption of the photo, which was screen-grabbed by Yahoo, she wrote that "this one guy treated us like cattle" and "I forgot to mention that guy will be running to become the next President of United States."
Rolling Stone reported that Searle updated her original post, adding a comment to the thread.
"He probably doesn’t want me telling the story about that time he continually grabbed my ass and invited me to his hotel room," Searle wrote, according to Rolling Stone.
ABC News has not been able to reach Searles, and Trump has not released a specific statement about her claims.
More than two years into Trump’s presidency, another accuser came forward with an accusation of an alleged decades-old incident.
In a New York magazine article posted June 21, 2019, advice columnist E. Jean Carroll accused Trump of sexually assaulting her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room 23 years ago. The article featured an excerpt from Carroll’s book “What Do We Need Men For,” which was to be released shortly after the article was published.
In response to Carroll’s allegations, Trump issued a statement hours after the article posted, vehemently denying her claims, and said that he never even met Carroll. “She is trying to sell a new book—that should indicate her motivation. It should be sold in the fiction section. 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.”
New York Magazine, in the online article, included a photo provided by Carroll which shows Carroll, Donald Trump and his then-wife Ivana, and Carroll’s then husband, television news anchor John Johnson, attending an NBC party around 1987.
In the book, Carroll wrote that she ran into Trump at the revolving door entrance of the high end department store’s entrance sometime during the fall of 1995 or spring of 1996. Carroll, who is now 76, claims he said to her, “Hey, you’re that Advice Lady” and then asked her advice on buying a present for “a girl.” She writes the two ended up in the lingerie department, where Carroll claims he asked her to try on a see-through bodysuit. Inside the dressing room, Carroll alleges that Trump lunged at her, pushed her against the wall, placed his mouth on her lips, and reached under her coatdress and pulled down her tights. In Carroll’s own words, she alleges, “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, then thrusts his penis halfway- or completely, I’m not certain- inside me. It turns into a colossal struggle.”
Carroll said she never reported the incident to the police, but that she confided in two friends, contemporaneously.
ABC News reached both of Carroll’s friends who asked that their names not be used but corroborated that what she described in her book is what she told them at the time of the alleged incident.
On June 23, 2019, Trump reiterated his denials during an interview with The Hill, saying that Carroll was “totally lying” and going on to say that “she’s not my type” and “it never happened.”
With less than seven weeks to go until the 2020 election, another former model came out with a sexual assault allegation against the president.
Amy Dorris, in an exclusive interview with The Guardian, claimed that at the 1997 U.S. Open in New York Trump groped her body and forced his tongue into her mouth outside of a bathroom.
Dorris says she watched the matches from Trump's private box with her then-boyfriend, Jason Binn, who was close with the real estate mogul. At one point during the event, she went to the bathroom that was located in the box but behind a wall -- and said Trump was waiting outside the bathroom when she walked out.
"He just shoved his tongue down my throat and I was pushing him off. And then that's when his grip became tighter and his hands were very gropey and all over my butt, my breasts, my back, everything," she told The Guardian.
"It felt like an octopus was hugging onto me. You just picture those suction cups on octopus. They're stuck on you, and you're trapped. That's how I felt. I felt trapped," she added.
According to The Guardian, Dorris was able to produce the U.S. Open ticket and several photos showing her with Trump over several days in New York. The Guardian reported that she allegedly had told people about this contemporaneously, but according to the outlet, Trump’s lawyers say Binn told them Dorris has not told him that anything inappropriate had happened with Trump or that she felt uncomfortable around him.
Trump was married to Marla Maples at the time of the alleged incident. Dorris was 24.
Jenna Ellis, legal advisor to the Trump campaign, told ABC News that "the allegations are totally false."
"This is just another pathetic attempt to attack President Trump right before the election," Ellis said in a statement.
The president's lawyers also pointed out that Dorris kept spending time with Trump, even after the alleged incident. Dorris now says it's because she was a guest of her boyfriend's in New York and had "no money" and "nowhere to go."
ABC News’ James Hill, Cindy Smith, Kaitlyn Folmer and Libby Cathey contributed to this report.