The Washington Post :
A staffer on Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign says he kissed her without her consent at a small gathering of supporters before a Florida rally, an interaction that she alleges in a new lawsuit still causes her anguish.
In interviews with The Washington Post, and in the lawsuit, Alva Johnson said Trump grabbed her hand and leaned in to kiss her on the lips as he exited an RV outside the rally in Tampa on Aug. 24, 2016. Johnson said she turned her head and the unwanted kiss landed on the side of her mouth, which she called “super-creepy and inappropriate.” “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 said she told her boyfriend, mother and stepfather about the incident later that day, an account all three confirmed to The Post. Two months later, Johnson consulted a Florida attorney about the unwanted kiss; he gave The Post text messages showing that he considered her “credible” but did not take her case for business reasons. The attorney gave Johnson the name of a therapist, whose notes, which The Post reviewed, reference an unspecified event during the campaign that had left her distraught.
In a statement, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders dismissed Johnson’s allegation as “absurd on its face.”
“This never happened and is directly contradicted by multiple highly credible eye witness accounts,” she wrote.
Two Trump supporters that Johnson identified as witnesses – a campaign official and Pam Bondi, then the Florida attorney general – denied seeing the alleged kiss in interviews with The Post.
While more than a dozen other women have publicly accused Trump of touching them in some inappropriate way, Johnson is the only accuser to come forward since he took office and the only one to allege unwanted contact during the campaign. Trump faces a defamation lawsuit in New York brought by Summer Zervos, a former “Apprentice” reality TV contestant, who claims he forcibly kissed and groped her in 2007.
Johnson, an event planner who lives in Madison County, Alabama, is seeking unspecified damages for emotional pain and suffering. The federal lawsuit, filed Monday in Florida, also alleges that the campaign discriminated against Johnson, who is black, by paying her less than her white male counterparts. A campaign spokeswoman, Kayleigh McEnany, rejected that claim as “off-base and unfounded.”
The Post first contacted Johnson nearly a year ago, while reporting on misconduct allegations against Trump, but she declined to comment.
In recent days, Johnson’s attorney gave The Post a draft copy of her complaint, and Johnson and others connected to the lawsuit agreed to be interviewed.
Johnson said she began to consider coming forward in October 2016, after video surfaced of Trump bragging about kissing and groping women without their consent. That was the moment, she said, when she came to view the kiss as part of a pattern of Trump doing whatever he pleased to women.
She said she was nervous about speaking out but had come to regret having worked on the campaign. “I’ve tried to let it go,” she said, beginning to cry. “You want to move on with your life. I don’t sleep. I wake up at 4 in the morning looking at the news. I feel guilty. The only thing I did was show up for work one day.”
She said she talked to a few other lawyers as she considered her options before, in June of last year, finally hiring Hassan Zavareei, the Washington attorney bringing the lawsuit. Three months later, she moved to seal a years-old court case in which two family members had briefly sought a temporary restraining order against her. The family members joined her request to have the records sealed, documents show.
Johnson, a 43-year-old mother of four, does not have a long history of political activism. She registered as a Democrat in California several years ago. She said she voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 but thought Trump might be able to use his business experience to help struggling black communities.
Johnson got interested in the Trump campaign through her stepfather, Jacob Savage, a retired microbiology professor who said he has been active in Republican politics for decades. She met Trump at a November 2015 rally in Birmingham, Alabama, where Johnson said the candidate looked her up and down. “Oh, beautiful, beautiful, fantastic,” he said, according to the lawsuit.
She said she looked past the comment and, two months later, took a job as the campaign’s director of outreach and coalitions in Alabama. Johnson said she thought she could put her background in human resources and event planning to use on a political campaign.
