Attorney George Conway, the husband of White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, declared Saturday that the latest rape allegation against President Donald Trump is more credible than Juanita Broaddrick’s claim against former President Bill Clinton.
On Friday, journalist and advice columnist E. Jean Carroll accused President Trump and former CBS CEO Les Moonves of sexual assault in an excerpt of her forthcoming book excerpted Friday in New York magazine.
She said then-real estate tycoon Trump approached her in 1995 or 1996 at Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan. Recognizing each other, she said he asked her for help buying a gift for a woman. Trump was married to Marla Maples at the time.
Carroll said Trump followed her to a fitting room at the store, shoved her against a wall, pulled down her tights and, “forcing his fingers around my private area, thrusts his penis halfway — or completely, I’m not certain — inside me.”
In an opinion-editorial published in the Washington Post, Conway attempted to explain why Broaddrick’s allegation is less believable than Carrol’s. Conway wrote:
Broaddrick had told her story nearly two decades earlier, first to the media, and then later in a book. She had recounted how, in 1978, Clinton asked her up to his hotel room. How he allegedly forced himself upon her. How she tried to pull away. How he allegedly bit her lip, then later told her to put ice on it. How she sobbed. How she told some of her friends. How she didn’t tell the police. Clinton denied her accusations.
The Republican lawyer went on:
She, too, tells a story about how she was alone with a man. How in 1995 or 1996 that man, Trump, allegedly forced himself upon her. How she tried to fight back. How she tried to push him away and tried to stomp on his foot. How he penetrated her. How she ran out the door. How she told friends. How she didn’t tell the police.
Conway then wrote that Broaddrick, under oath, denied Clinton had assaulted her.
“For another, Carroll’s account is supported by the sheer number of claims that have now surfaced against Trump — claims in which women have accused Trump of engaging in unwelcome or forcible sexual conduct or assault against them,” Conway wrote.
The Trump critic concluded his op-ed by exploring what he referred to as an “easily disprovable Trumpian lie.” He wrote:
Finally, no controversy involving Trump would be complete without at least one utterly brazen, easily disprovable Trumpian lie. In his statement denying the rape allegation, he added the claim that ‘I’ve never met this person in my life.’ If Trump had even bothered to glance at Carroll’s published account, he would have seen a photograph of himself and his then-wife, Ivana, from 1987 ― in which he was amiably chatting with Carroll and her then-husband.
The White House denied the allegation from Carroll, the 16th woman to publicly accuse President Trump of sexual misconduct.
“This is a completely false and unrealistic story surfacing 25 years after allegedly taking place and was created simply to make the president look bad,” a senior White House official said in a statement to New York magazine.
In a separate statement, President Trump shot down the allegation, stating that he has never met Carrol.
“I’ve never met this person in my life,” President Trump told reporters. “She is trying to sell a new book — that should indicate her motivation. It should be sold in the fiction section.”