Former 'Apprentice' contestant accuses Trump of sexually harassing her in 2007

A former contestant on Donald Trump’s reality television show “The Apprentice” spoke out on Friday to accuse the Republican presidential nominee of sexually harassing her when she sought career advice from him after her time on the show.

Summer Zervos, who laid out her allegations at a tearful press conference with attorney Gloria Allred on Friday, said Trump pursued unwanted sexual advances toward her when she met with him at the Beverly Hills Hotel in Los Angeles to discuss employment opportunities in 2007.


Zervos said she had first met Trump when she was a candidate on the fifth season of “The Apprentice,” which aired in 2006, and later reached out to him for career advice, with the hope of working for the Trump Organization.

She first met with Trump in his New York office, Zervos said, where he kissed her unexpectedly multiple times on the lips, and he later suggested meeting in Los Angeles to discuss her employment. At the hotel, Zervos alleges, Trump attempted to make a sexual advance on her, and she rebuffed him. After the encounter, Zervos said, she still sought employment with the Trump Organization, and believed she was not offered a job because she had denied his advances.

Zervos is one of several women who have come forward this week and accused Trump of unwanted sexual advances, in some cases decades ago. One woman, whose claims were reported in The New York Times on Wednesday evening, said Trump groped her on a flight in the early 1980s; some others said that he forced kisses on them without their permission.

Allred is a feminist civil rights lawyer known for representing women who accused Bill Cosby of sexual assault, among other high-profile cases, and is a Hillary Clinton supporter. She told POLITICO on Thursday that she would be open to representing women with accusations against Trump, of whom she has been an outspoken critic.

Trump released a statement on the accusations Friday.

"I vaguely remember Ms. Zervos as one of the many contestants on The Apprentice over the years. To be clear, I never met her at a hotel or greeted her inappropriately a decade ago. That is not who I am as a person, and it is not how I've conducted my life. In fact, Ms. Zervos continued to contact me for help, emailing my office on April 14th of this year asking that I visit her restaurant in California," he said.

Later, the Trump campaign released a statement from a man it identified as Zervos' first cousin. In it, John Barry wrote that he was "shocked and bewildered" by Zervos' press conference, saying she's only said "glowing" things about Trump in the past. Below Barry's statement, the campaign enclosed an email with an April 14, 2016, timestamp sent by Zervos to a Trump company executive, in which Zervos touts her restaurant and its appeal to Trump supporters, while seeking to re-connect with the businessman.

The accusations from Zervos and others follow last week’s release of bombshell audio and video footage that showed him bragging about some of the actions of which he is now accused. Trump's celebrity, he boasted in the 2005 clip, meant he could get away with groping women and kissing them without asking.

Trump has denied that he ever engaged in the behavior described in the recording, apologizing for the comments but dismissing them as “locker room talk.”

Many of the women who have come forward, including Zervos, said that the emergence of the 2005 tape and Trump’s response to it at Sunday night’s second presidential debate prompted them to speak publicly about their experiences for the first time. On Sunday, questioned by CNN’s Anderson Cooper, Trump said he had never groped women and said he has the utmost respect for them.

The alleged incident Zervos described Friday involved her attempt to seek mentorship from a man she admired and his attempt to take advantage of her. By her account, Trump complimented her when she sought advice from him in New York, so while she was taken aback when he kissed her there, Zervos, her parents and a friend she confided in believed it was his way of greeting her. When Trump soon called her to suggest they get dinner in Los Angeles and asked that she meet him at a hotel, she accepted.

Zervos was surprised, she said Friday, when she was directed to a “bungalow” there, rather than a restaurant. It was in the bungalow that Zervos alleges Trump kissed her “very aggressively,” touched her breast, embraced her, and tried to initiate further sexual contact, “thrusting his genitals.” When she signaled that she wasn’t interested in his advances, she claims, he seemed angry, and before she left, they ate dinner. He also tried to talk to her about love, asked her questions as if in a job interview and gave her advice on her home loan.

She wondered if the sexual behavior was “some kind of test,” she said.

The next day, Zervos alleges, Trump met her at his golf course and introduced her to its general manager, who later called to offer her a job, though Trump did not. Zervos claims that she then called Trump and accused him of penalizing her because she had refused to have sex with him, but he declined to discuss it, saying he was out golfing. In a later conversation, Zervos says, Trump told her to contact him through his office, not his private number. According to Zervos, after she sent him a follow-up letter to ask for a job again, he claimed to have not received it, and added that he could not hire her because his company was in the midst of layoffs.

“I was disappointed, but harbored no ill will toward Mr. Trump whatsoever and felt that there was no point in any further attempts to get a job with Mr. Trump,” Zervos said Friday.

Zervos said she had previously told a “few people” close to her about the alleged 2007 incidents, but she did not go public at the time. Trump’s rise in the battle for the Republican presidential nomination, she said, brought them to mind again, as she “saw and heard Mr. Trump non-stop on the television and in the news” and customers at the restaurant she owns asked her about him, given their “Apprentice” connection.

That, Zervos said Friday, caused her “a great deal of pain and anguish, and I felt the need to confront Mr. Trump.”

Unaware that other women would soon allege that he had treated them similarly, Zarvos said she reached out to Trump in April via email, thinking that he might be “embarrassed by his behavior and this would provide him the opportunity to clear the air.” By her account, she asked his assistant to forward along a message informing him that she was “incredibly hurt” by their interaction, asked to hear from him, and wished him “continued success.” She didn’t hear back, she said.

Her voice emotional, Zervos addressed Trump directly at the conclusion of her statement on Friday, telling the businessman that he had objectified her. “Mr. Trump, when I met you I was so impressed with your talents that I wanted to be like you. I wanted a job within your organization. Instead, you treated me as if an object to be hit upon,” she said.

“Mr. Trump, today I feel that you were interested in me only because you wanted to have a sexual relationship with me and for no other reason,” she continued. “After hearing the released audio tapes and your denials during the debate, I feel that I have to speak out about your behavior. You do not have the right to treat women as sexual objects just because you are a star.”

Trump’s campaign had not put out a statement in response to Zervos’ specific allegations by late Friday afternoon. But Trump has pushed back aggressively on the other sexual harassment accusations he faces, alleging that the news media and the Clinton campaign are conspiring against his election and accusing the women of lying in search of publicity or for political reasons.

At a campaign rally in North Carolina on Friday, Trump went a step further, and suggested that two of the women weren’t attractive enough to have earned his interest.

“Believe me, she would not be my first choice,” he said of Jessica Leeds, who said Trump groped her during a commercial flight decades ago.

“She is a liar. Check out her Facebook page, you'll understand," Trump said of Natasha Stoynoff, a People magazine writer who accused him of kissing her with her consent in 2005.

At the press conference in Los Angeles, Allred tried to fend off against any suspicion that Zervos’ specific allegations were politically motivated, telling reporters that “her contact with me was long before politics were involved.”

And asked what she hopes “comes out of this revelation,” Zervos said, “I want to be able to sleep when I’m 70 at night. That’s my answer.”

Allred has also called on the producer of “The Apprentice” to release footage from the program in light of the 2005 tape, which Allred charged revealed the “ugly truth of Donald Trump”: that “he is using his celebrity as a blank check for sexual assault.”

The Associated Press reported earlier this month that former “Apprentice” cast and crew members say that Trump “repeatedly demeaned women with sexist language” throughout his time on the show.

