A contestant in the 2013 Miss USA pageant alleges that Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump groped her and invited her back to his hotel room.
Cassandra Searles, Miss Washington 2013, wrote a Facebook post in June outlining a series of complaints about Trump’s behavior. In the post, she included a picture of Trump standing in the middle of all the pageant contestants and tagged many of her fellow competitors in the post.
“Miss USA Class of 2013: Do y’all remember that one time we had to do our on stage introductions, but this one guy treated us like cattle and made us do it again because we didn’t look him in the eyes? Do you also remember when he then proceeded to have us lined up so he could get a closer look at his property? Oh I forgot to mention that guy will be in the running to become the next President of the United States. I love the idea of having a misogynist as the President. ... #HeWillProbablySueMe #iHaveWorseStoriesSoComeAtMeBro #Drumpf”
Yahoo! reported in June that other contestants complaints about Trump in the comments.
In an article about Trump’s history with the pageant, Rolling Stone reported that Searles added a comment to her original post.
“He probably doesn’t want me telling the story about that time he continually grabbed my ass and invited me to his hotel room.”
Trump owned the Miss USA pageant from 2002 to 2015, when he sold to WME amid controversy over his statements about Mexicans.
The New York Times reported Wednesday that two women claim Trump touched them inappropriately. In that story, a former Miss Utah claims that Trump kissed her on the month more than once when she was a contestant.
Trump denied the accusations to the Times.
The news comes less than a week after The Washington Post posted a video of Trump bragging about touching and kissing women without consent. Trump apologized for the comments, but has called it “locker room talk” in recent days and said he did not do any of the actions he was caught discussing.