Melania Trump threatens to sue People magazine after Donald Trump is accused of sexual assault

She demands there is a retraction and apology over the first-person account by Natasha Stoynoff

Friday 14 October 2016 07:50 BST
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Melania Trump
Melania Trump

Donald Trump's wife has threatened to sue People magazine as the fallout rumbled on from a series of media reports alleging sexual assaults by her husband.

Melania Trump said portions of the People article are "false and completely fictionalised".

She demanded a retraction and apology, and threatened to sue the publication over the first-person account by Natasha Stoynoff of an interview she did with Donald and Melania Trump at their home in Mar-a-Lago, Florida.

Ms Stoynoff said that when Mrs Trump left the room, her husband pushed Ms Stoynoff against a wall and sexually assaulted her.

The Republican presidential candidate says the account is untrue.

Meanwhile, the New York Times rejected Mr Trump's claim that the newspaper had libelled him, saying its own story about two other women who said he sexually assaulted them was "newsworthy information about a subject of deep public concern".

Times lawyer David McCraw said Mr Trump "has bragged about his non-consensual sexual touching of women" and that multiple women had already come forward.

"Nothing in our article has had the slightest effect on the reputation that Mr Trump, through his own words and actions, has already created for himself," he wrote.

The Times reported that two women told the paper of unwanted sexual advances. Jessica Leeds said Mr Trump groped her on a plane more than three decades ago, and Rachel Crooks said he kissed her without invitation in 2006 when she was a 22-year-old receptionist for a real estate firm at Trump Tower.

Mr Trump vehemently denies the allegations, blaming the media and his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, and has demanded through his lawyer that the Times story be retracted.

He said: "These vicious claims about me, of inappropriate conduct with women, are totally and absolutely false. And the Clintons know it."

His accusers, he added, "are horrible people. They're horrible, horrible liars".

Press Association

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