White House staff make new abuse claims against Donald Trump
Trump’s former communications staff saw ‘countless cases’ of ‘impropriety and had to take steps to protect a female co-worker from him.
Two female members of Donald Trump’s staff said they witnessed his inappropriate behaviour with women in the White House as the former president attempted to brush off a jury’s finding that he sexually abused a journalist.
Alyssa Farah Griffin, his former communications director, said she saw “countless cases” of “impropriety” and Stephanie Grisham, a former press secretary, described steps she took to protect a female staff member from his attentions.
They spoke out as E Jean Carroll, 79, the columnist sexually abused by Trump in a Manhattan department store, celebrated her civil court victory and accused Trump of being too “frightened” to answer her claims in person.
Some senior Republicans in Congress rallied around Trump, 76, but many party figures avoided saying what they thought of their leading presidential candidate being branded a sex abuser and a liar in Tuesday’s unanimous New York jury decision.
Just one of the Republicans running against Trump in the primary contest to be the 2024 candidate condemned him. Asa Hutchinson, the former Arkansas governor, who is running on an anti-Trump platform, called the accusations “another example of the indefensible behaviour of Donald Trump”.
Nikki Haley, a former South Carolina governor and UN ambassador under Trump, who is also running for the nomination, ducked the question. “We’ve got to focus on what people are talking about,” she said when asked about the Carroll case. “I’m doing town halls all over Iowa and New Hampshire and South Carolina. And they are concerned about inflation. They’re concerned about their kids’ education. They’re concerned about the border and how out of control it is … those are the things they care about.”
There was no word from Trump’s main rival Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor, nor from Ted Cruz, a Texas senator, a 2016 rival who has become a strong supporter of his.
Vivek Ramaswamy, a tech entrepreneur from the hard right, said he doubted a case would have been brought if the defendant had been someone other than the former president.
Trump spent the day posting polls on social media showing him a long way ahead of the Republican field. He also linked to an article in a Republican magazine that stated: “Trump may be imperfect, but voters have seen what happens when the country reverts to a pre-Trump leader like Biden. The political class has not mended its ways. It has to be replaced, and Trump is the beginning of its replacement.”
The federal jury in Manhattan rejected E Jean Carroll’s civil claim that Trump raped her but found he sexually abused her in 1996. They awarded her dollars 5 million for assault and defamation.
Carroll said that the momentous end to the case was “the happiest day of my life.” She added: “I would have loved to see Robbie [Kaplan, her lawyer] put him on the stand. However I think he was frightened of her.”
In Trump’s deposition in October last year, he misidentified a photo of Carroll as his second wife, Marla Maples. Kaplan was quick to confront him with his previous statement that Carroll was “not my type”.
Griffin said she had seen “countless cases” of what she considered “impropriety” in the White House that she reported to Trump’s chiefs of staff.
“When Donald Trump tells you who he is, believe him,” she told CNN. “I mean, we wanted to chalk it up to locker-room talk in 2016. It was not locker-room talk. Now he has been held liable in this case for actually committing sexual assault.”
Grisham said Trump would comment frequently on women’s looks and speculate about cosmetic surgery, and she found his alleged harassment of one staff member particularly concerning. “With this one staffer, it was really bad, to the point that I was extremely uncomfortable,” Grisham said. “I did everything I could to keep her off of trips and to stay with her if she was with him alone because I was really nervous about what could happen.”
Samantha Holvey, a former Miss North Carolina USA who has also accused Trump of sexual misconduct, said she felt an “overwhelming sense of joy” after the civil case ruling. Holvey claimed in 2016 that Trump inspected each of the pageant contestants individually, which made her feel like a “piece of meat”.
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