Donald Trump wanted to add to Sunday night's presidential debate theatrics by forcing Bill Clinton to come face-to-face with three women who have accused him of sexual misconduct that ranges from extramarital affairs to rape — a spectacle that the Commission on Presidential Debates quickly quashed.

The campaign's plan was to seat the women in the Trump family box in the front row of the debate hall as a way to intimidate Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and embarrass former president Bill Clinton by attempting to make him shake hands with the women, according to The Washington Post. Commission officials, who learned of the Trump campaign's intentions just minutes before taking the stage, said security officers would remove the women if they went through with the plan. Trump campaign chief executive Stephen K. Bannon and Jared Kushner, the candidate's son-in-law, devised the scheme, and it was approved by Trump himself, the Post reported.

The women — Paula Jones, Juanita Broaddrick and Kathleen Willey — were supposed to walk into the debate hall at the same time as Bill Clinton and confront him.

"We were going to put the four women in the VIP box," said former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. "We had it all set. We wanted to have them shake hands with Bill, to see if Bill would shake hands with them."



Giuliani said the debate commission's co-chairman, Frank Fahrenkopf, rejected the plan. "Fahrenkopf said, 'no' – verbally said 'no,' that 'security would throw them out,'" Giuliani said.

Giuliani added that Bannon insisted on having the women go through with it until three minutes before the debate began.

"But we pulled it because we were going to have a big incident on national TV," Giuliani said. "Frank Fahrenkopf stopped us and we weren't going to have a fight on national TV with the commission to start the debate."

Trump appeared with the women less than two hours before the debate, streaming it through Facebook Live — a move that many considered a stunt to end the 48 hours of intense scrutiny following the discovery of a 2005 video in which he boasted about how he tried to have sex with a married women and how being "a star" allows him to kiss, grope and have sex with women as he sees fit. Hillary Clinton's communications director Jennifer Palmieri responded after news of Trump's live streaming broke, saying,"We're not surprised to see Donald Trump continue his destructive race to the bottom."