A former staffer on President Donald Trump‘s 2016 campaign team alleges in a new lawsuit that he kissed her without her consent at an event prior to a Florida rally.
The lawsuit and interviews with The Washington Post reveal the staffer, Alva Johnson, claims Trump took her hand and leaned in to kiss her on the lips as he left an RV outside the rally on Aug. 24, 2016 in Tampa. Johnson added she turned her head and the kiss landed on the side of her mouth.
Johnson called Trump’s unsolicited action “super creepy and inappropriate” and said she is still distressed by the alleged incident.
“I immediately felt violated because I wasn’t expecting it or wanting it,” she said. “I can still see his lips coming straight for my face.”
Johnson’s mother, stepfather and boyfriend all confirmed the account of the incident. Johnson is reportedly seeking unspecified damages as part of her lawsuit.
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The White House vehemently denied Trump’s alleged harassment in a statement. Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders called Johnson’s accusation “absurd on its face.”
“This never happened and is directly contradicted by multiple highly credible eye witness accounts,” Sanders wrote.
Johnson reportedly named two Trump supporters — one of whom was then-Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi — as eyewitnesses of the incident. However, both witnesses told The Post they never saw Trump kiss Johnson.
Johnson, 43, is a mother of four who is reportedly registered as a Democrat and who revealed she voted for Barack Obama in both 2008 and 2012. However, she signed on to work with Trump’s 2016 campaign because she believed his business experience would help him assist poor African-American communities.
Trump, 72, has been accused of sexual harassment and assault by multiple women since announcing his presidential bid in 2016. The president still faces a defamation suit in New York brought by Summer Zervos, a former contestant on The Apprentice who alleges the real estate mogul forcibly kissed and groped her in 2007.
The most severe allegations of sexual misconduct against Trump came in October 2016, after audio from an Access Hollywood tape was leaked that revealed him boasting about assaulting women while on a bus with Billy Bush in 2005. Approximately a year later, a movement against sexual harassment called #MeToo began in many industries and dozens of prominent men became disgraced after scores of women came forward with accusations of misconduct.
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