Campaign’s Witness, Who Reportedly Claimed He ‘Supplied Underage Rent Boys’ Says Trump Didn’t Assault Woman on Plane

‘Shrill’ Accuser ‘The One Being Flirtatious,’ Not Trump, Says Man Who Also Said He Procured Underaged Teens

A man tabloids say admitted to procuring underage boys for British Cabinet Ministers has been offered up by the Trump presidential campaign as a witness who insists the billionaire businessman did not sexually assault Jessica Leeds on an airplane in the early 1980’s.

Leeds came forward this week in a New York Times article published Thursday accusing Trump of sexually assaulting her in the first class cabin of an airplane in the early 1980s. Leeds says Trump “was like an octopus” and put his hands up her skirt.

The Trump campaign sent The New York Post a note Friday with a statement by Anthony Gilberthorpe that says, “I have only met this accuser once and frankly cannot imagine why she is seeking to make out that Trump made sexual advances on her. Not only did he not do so (and I was present at all times) but it was she that was the one being flirtatious.”

Calling Leeds “shrill” and “very much in your face,” Gilberthorpe says Leeds was “trying too hard” and “wanted to marry” Donald Trump.

Gilberthorpe, who would have been around 20, says he remembers Leeds wearing a white pant suit on the plane about 35 years ago.

“What she said about Trump is wrong,” Gilberthorpe, no stranger to the tabloids, told The Post. “I mean, no decent human being could sit by and have a woman go on television and tell the United States of America — accuse an individual of sexually molesting. It’s wrong for Trump, it’s wrong for me. But you know something else? It’s wrong for the American people.”

The Post reports “Gilberthorpe has no evidence to back up his claim — just his self-described excellent memory.”

The NY tabloid also notes that “Gilberthorpe made headlines in 2014, when he went public with a claim that as a 17-year-old he procured boys (some who ‘could have been’ underage’) for sex parties with high-ranking British politicians.”

Indeed, a July 2014 headline in the UK’s Mirror reads: “Tory child abuse whistleblower: ‘I supplied underage rent boys for Margaret Thatcher’s cabinet ministers.'”

That same month a headline in the Independent read: “Westminster abuse inquiry: ‘I found rent boys to entertain top Tory politicians in the 1980s’, claims former party activist.”

The Daily Mail today calls “unprovable” Gilberthorpe’s “claims that he provided young boys for UK politicians’ sex parties in the 1980s.”

On Twitter some mocked the Trump campaign and their “character witness”:

 

Image by Gage Skidmore via Flickr and a CC license