On Wednesday, four women accused Donald Trump of making unwanted sexual advances on them. | Getty These are the women who have accused Trump of groping or ogling them

Donald Trump’s campaign is struggling to cope with a wave of sexual assault allegations leveled against the GOP nominee. On Wednesday alone, four women accused the real estate billionaire of making unwanted sexual advances on them.

The most recently publicized claims of sexual assault against Trump are the latest in a series of allegations made against him that range from groping women to ogling underage girls. Many but not all of the allegations stem from Trump’s ownership of the Miss USA, Miss Teen USA and Miss Universe pageants.


Trump's campaign has denied the women's accusations.

The New York Times reported Wednesday on two such instances, the first in the early 1980s when a businesswoman named Jessica Leeds said she sat next to Trump in the first-class cabin of a flight to New York. Leeds alleged that after the dinner trays had been cleared, Trump raised the armrest between their seats and proceeded to grope her breasts and attempt to put his hand up her skirt. “He was like an octopus,” Leeds said. “His hands were everywhere.”

In the second allegation, published in the same Times’ story as Leeds’, a woman named Rachel Crooks accuses Trump of forcibly kissing her in Trump Tower. Crooks was a 22-year-old receptionist for a real estate company with offices in Trump’s Manhattan skyscraper in 2005 when she said she ran into the former reality TV star outside of an elevator in the building. She told the Times that she introduced herself to Trump and shook his hand, he would not let her go and instead proceeded to kiss her on the cheeks and on her mouth. “It was so inappropriate,” Crooks told the Times. “I was so upset that he thought I was so insignificant that he could do that.” In a phone interview with the Times about the accusations, Trump said “none of this ever took place” and told the reporter that “you are a disgusting human being.” The GOP nominee’s senior communications adviser released a statement about the report, labeling it “fiction” and accusing the paper of “launching a completely false, coordinated character assassination against Mr. Trump.”

Also in 2005, People magazine reporter Natasha Stoynoff said Trump forcibly kissed her during an interview at the real estate mogul’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. Detailing her allegation in a story published on Wednesday, Stoynoff said she was in Florida to interview Trump about his recent marriage to Melania Trump, but as soon as she was alone with the real estate billionaire, Stoynoff said Trump pinned her against the wall and forcibly kissed her. Stoynoff and Crooks’ allegations bear a striking resemblance to Trump’s description of his own behavior on a now-infamous 2005 recording, where the reality TV star tells Billy Bush of "Access Hollywood" ““You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait.” A spokeswoman for Trump’s campaign said Stoynoff’s allegation was a “fabrication” and the nominee himself wondered aloud on Twitter, “why didn't the writer of the twelve year old article in People Magazine mention the ‘incident’ in her story. Because it did not happen!” Stoynoff said in her Wednesday article that she did not include her allegation against Trump in her original story because she “doubted my recollection and my reaction” and was “afraid that a famous, powerful, wealthy man could and would discredit and destroy me, especially if I got his coveted PEOPLE feature killed.”

In a fourth allegation made public on Wednesday, a woman named Mindy McGillivray told the Palm Beach Post that Trump had groped her butt at Mar-a-Lago, where she was assisting a photographer friend of hers, in 2003. She was 23 at the time. Trump’s press secretary, Hope Hicks, told the Post that “there is no truth to this whatsoever,” and added that “this allegation lacks any merit or veracity.”

Five different Miss Teen USA pageant contestants told BuzzFeed that Trump, who owned the pageant (as well as Miss USA and Miss Universe) from 1996 until 2015, entered the contestants’ dressing room as the girls were changing. Victoria Hughes, the former Miss New Mexico Teen USA, said the youngest contestant at her 1997 pageant was 15 and she was the oldest at 19. Another contestant, former Miss Vermont Teen USA Mariah Billado, recalled Trump saying something along the lines of “Don’t worry, ladies, I’ve seen it all before” as girls hastened to cover up as he entered the room. Other former pageant contestants said they had no memory of seeing Trump in the dressing room and some contended that Trump would not have been able to enter. The allegations from the pageant contestants are corroborated at least in part by Trump’s own remarks during a 2005 interview with Howard Stern. “No men are anywhere, and I’m allowed to go in, because I’m the owner of the pageant and therefore I’m inspecting it,” Trump said. “You know, they’re standing there with no clothes. ‘Is everybody OK?’ And you see these incredible-looking women, and so I sort of get away with things like that.” Asked about the BuzzFeed report during a CNN interview on Wednesday, Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway said, “I can’t comment on what she’s saying because I’m not her and I wasn’t in the pageant or any other pageant,” complaining to anchor Brianna Keilar that “you want me to comment on something he said to Howard Stern in 15 seconds, 10 years ago, and that somehow I am an expert on it.”

In a 1992 Christmas feature for "Entertainment Tonight" uncovered by CBS, which distributes the show in the U.S., Trump asks a young girl if she’s “going up the escalator.” The girl responds that she is, at which point Trump tells the camera “I am going to be dating her in 10 years. Can you believe it?”

A December 1992 news brief in the Chicago Tribune, headlined "Such a comedian," finds Trump sidling up to a pair of girls who were singing Christmas carols with a youth choir outside Manhattan's Plaza Hotel. "He asked two of the girls how old they were," the report reads. "After they replied they were 14, Trump said, "Wow! Just think -- in a couple of years I'll be dating you."

According to a Rolling Stone report, Miss Washington 2013 Cassandra Searles wrote in a Facebook post that the real estate mogul “treated us like cattle” during her pageant experience. In a comment to her subsequent post, she added that “He probably doesn't want me telling the story about that time he continually grabbed my ass and invited me to his hotel room."

Temple Taggart, who was Miss Utah in Trump’s 1997 pageant, told The New York Times last May that Trump kissed her on the lips twice, once when they were introduced and another time in Trump Tower. Taggart repeated the story of Trump’s introductory kiss to NBC’s “Today” show on Thursday, growing emotional as she told the camera that “you think of sending your little daughter out there, sorry, with men like that, that think like that.” “I don’t know anything about her,” Trump told NBC. “I emphatically deny this ridiculous claim.”

Kristin Anderson, a former aspiring model, told The Washington Post that Trump slid his fingers inside her miniskirt while she was engaged in a conversation with others on a red velvet couch inside a Manhattan nightclub in the early 1990s. Trump, she alleged, had touched her inner thigh and vagina through her underwear when she pushed his hand away and realized it was Trump. Anderson recalled that she and her acquaintances were "very grossed out and weirded out." They thought: "OK, Donald is gross. We all know he's gross. Let's just move on."

Summer Zervos, a contestant on the fifth season of "The Apprentice," said Trump kissed her twice on the lips during a meeting between the two in Manhattan in 2007. In another meeting between the two in Los Angeles, Zervos said Trump invited her to his bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Zervos said he kissed her and groped her breast. When she tried to back away, she said Trump grabbed her hand and walked her to the bedroom. He then embraced her and she pushed him away. Zervos recalled telling Trump to "get real," which she said prompted Trump to thrust his genitals at her and try again to kiss her. Trump then asked what Zervos wanted, the former reality TV contestant recalled, to which she replied that it was her understanding that she had been invited to have dinner. Trump has denied any impropriety.

Cathy Heller, 63, told The Guardian that Trump "grabbed me and went for my mouth and went for my lips,” at a Mother's Day brunch at the Republican nominee's Mar-a-Lago estate in 1997. Heller said she was attending the brunch with her husband, her three children, and her in-laws, along with dozens of other families. Heller said she leaned backwards and almost lost her balance as a result of Trump's actions. She said she was left "angry and shaken." Trump's campaign has denied the accusation.