‘Apprentice’ Contestant Accuses Donald Trump of Unwanted Sexual Advances
Summer Zervos, a contestant on Season 5 of “The Apprentice,” claims that Donald Trump made unwanted sexual advances on her in a 2007 meeting at a Beverly Hills Hotel bungalow set up after she was off the show.
At a press conference on Friday with attorney Gloria Allred, Zervos claims that after she was fired from the show, she sought to stay in touch with Trump, seeking career advice as well as possible employment with the Trump organization.
Expecting a dinner meeting at the Beverly Hills Hotel, Zervos said that she instead arrived at the hotel to find that Trump wanted to meet her in his bungalow.
She said that she waited in the bungalow for about 15 minutes until Trump emerged.
“I stood up and he came to me and started kissing me open mouthed as he was pulling me towards him,” she recalled, her voice choking up at points before a packed room of cameras and reporters at Allred’s office.
“I walked away and sat down on a chair,” she said. “He was on a love seat across from me and I made an attempt at conversation. He then asked me to sit next to him. I complied. He then grabbed my shoulder and began kissing me again very aggressively and placed his hand on my breast. I pulled back and walked to another part of the room. He then walked up, grabbed my hand and walked me into the bedroom.”
Zervos said that she then walked out.
“He then turned me around and said, ‘Let’s lay down and watch some telly telly.” He then tried to embrace her, she said, but she pushed his chest to “some space between us” and “I said, come on man, ‘get real.'”
She said that she made it clear she was “not interested.”
“I said I came to have dinner. He said, ‘okay, we will have dinner.'”
They then engaged in an awkward conversation about business, as well as what she should do about a mortgage on her home.
Allred said that Zervos described the incident to two people at the time, and that she corroborated their accounts.
Zervos also said that after she rebuffed Trump’s advances, he gave her the “runaround” as she continued to pursue a job in his company. She says that she told Trump over the phone that she felt “like I was being penalized for not sleeping with him.” Trump said that he was golfing and would not discuss it, she said.
Zervos said that she had initially sought a meeting with Trump earlier in 2007, after she was off the show. When she met him at Trump Tower, he greeted her by kissing her on the lips, she said. Although she said that she was a bit uncomfortable with that, she initially dismissed it. He later called her, she says, to set up the meeting in Beverly Hills.
Zervos, who described herself as a Republican, said that she reached out to Trump’s secretary earlier this year, as he was in the midst of the campaign. She said that she sent the secretary an email to forward, in which she talked of how she had been “so impressed with your talents that I wanted to be like you.” She said she also wrote, “Your interest in me as a potential employee meant the world to me. Your interest in me as anything more blew my mind, and I lost my footing. I have been incredibly hurt by our previous interaction. I hope to hear from you and wish you continued success.” Trump, she said, did not reply.
She said that she decided to come forward after the release of an “Access Hollywood” video in which Trump made lewd comments about women to Billy Bush, and after Sunday’s debate, where the Republican nominee denied that he had ever committed sexual assault.
“I wanted to be able to sleep when I am 70 at night,” she said.
A spokeswoman for the Trump campaign did not immediately return a request for comment.
Allred said no criminal reports have been filed, and that Zervos is not pursing litigation at this time. She said that “many women” have contacted her about other inappropriate interactions with Trump.
Zervos’ press conference came after several women went public with their own accounts of the GOP candidate’s sexual misconduct, including a woman who came forward Friday claiming Trump touched her inappropriately at a club in the 1990s.
Allred was a Clinton delegate at the Democratic National Convention and attended a fundraiser for Clinton on Thursday at the home of Casey and Laura Wasserman.
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