Women who say Donald Trump sexually abused them called today for Congress to investigate the president’s treatment of them and other women who have come forward.
“I think politicians seem to be immune to this,” said Rachel Crooks, who joined Jessica Leeds and Samantha Holvey to tell their stories on NBC’s “Megyn Kelly Today” show Monday morning.
“We are private citizens and for us to put ourselves out there, to try and show America who this man is, and especially how he views women, for them to say ‘Meh, we don’t care,’ it hurt,” Holvey said.
The three originally told the American public in November 2016 about Trump’s sexual misconduct towards them. They scheduled a press conference later on Monday to call for an investigation into the president’s behavior.
A White House statement says Trump has “totally disputed in most cases” and “the timing and absurdity of these false claims speak volumes.”
Crooks felt the absurdity belongs to Trump and called the statement “laughable.”
They noted that revelations of sexual harassment by prominent men, media figures and elected officials have shown the need for action against Trump and others.
The women offered examples of sexual misconduct by Trump over the last three decades.
“The environment is different now,” Holvey said.
She said Trump, as owner of the Miss USA pageant,, “personally inspected” her as a contestant and Miss North Carolina in 2006 and his attitude and leers make her feel “the dirtiest I felt in my entire life.”
In the 2013 Miss USA pageant, another contestant, contestant Cassandra Searles said Trump “treated us like cattle” and “proceeded to have us lined up so he could take a closer look at his property.”
Trump, in 2005, admitted to radio host Howard Stern that he would “go backstage and everyone’s getting dressed, and everything else, and you know, 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.”
Trump added: “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.”
Contestants said Trump would walk in on them where they were topless or even completely nude and glare at their bodies.
Jessica Leeds says she was a traveling sales executive when she sat next to Trump in a first class seat on a flight more than 30 years ago and he groped and kissed her.
“They served a dinner. After the dinner was cleared he began encroaching on my side of the seat,” Leeds told Audie Cornish of National Public Radio. “Mr. Trump started coming over to me and groping me and trying to embrace me. And then his hands started going up my skirt.”
“”Whether it was 15 minutes or not, it seemed like forever,” she recalls. “It really rattled me.”
Rachel Crooks, a 22 year old receptionist at Bayrock Group’s office in the Trump Tower encountered Trump in an elevator in 2005 and says they shook hands but he would not let go and pulled her to him and starting kissing her cheeks and then on her mouth.
“It was so inappropriate,” Crooks said later in an interview. “I was so upset that he thought I was so insignificant that he could do that.”
“I think he’s a pathological liar,” she later told Newsweek when Trump reportedly told a senator that an audio tape where he bragged about grabbing a woman’s genitals.
“I’m so thankful other women are having the courage to come forward, but yes, I do feel forgotten,” Crooks told CNN. “I mean, you can’t help but wonder why people aren’t talking about Trump and the people that came forward to accuse him, and why is he immune to this.”
So she is joining the others to tell her story again and ask Congress to investigate the actions of the president.
The trio who came forward Monday are not alone. Nikki Haley, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and one of the highest profile women in the Trump administration said women who have accused Trump of sexual misconduct “should be heard.”
“They should be heard, and they should be dealt with,” Haley said. “And I think any woman who has felt violated or felt mistreated in any way, they have every right to speak up.” _____________________________________________________
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