People Magazine: 6 Others Corroborate Writer’s Story of Trump’s Attack
Six friends and co-workers of People magazine writer Natasha Stoynoff are corroborating her account of Donald Trump forcing himself upon her as she was doing a story at his Mar-a-Lago estate in 2005.
Trump denies that the incident occurred, and his wife Melania Trump also disputed portions of the story.
On Tuesday, People published a piece in which five people who Stoynoff knew at the time, including editors, friends and her former journalism professor, say that she relayed the story to them shortly after it took place.
One of her friends, Marina Grasic, said that she got a call from Stoynoff the day after the incident.
“Natasha was also struggling about not hurting pregnant Melania if the story came out,” Grasic told People. “Beyond just the attack, she was horrified by the vulgar circumstances under which she was attacked and propositioned to have an affair. She was there in a professional capacity, writing an article about their happy marriage, and after the incident Trump acted like nothing happened.”
Stoynoff said in her story last week that Trump was giving her a tour of the estate when he took her to an empty room and then “shut the door behind us. I turned around, and within seconds he was pushing me against the wall and forcing his tongue down my throat.”
Her journalism professor, Paul McLaughlin, tweeted that she phoned him “distraught” and “crying.” “Said Trump assaulted her,” he wrote.
“We both thought he would try to destroy her if she charged him,” he added. “It was tough decision but in a he said/she said we believed she would lose. He seemed rather nasty at the time.”
Another friend of Stoynoff’s, Liza Herz, said that she was a witness to a chance meeting that Stoynoff had with Melania Trump after the Mar-a-Lago visit.
“They chatted in a friendly way,” Herz told People. “And what struck me most was that Melania was carrying a child and wearing heels.”
Melania Trump has denied that the meeting even occurred, and her attorney even sent People a letter last week demanding a retraction or face legal action. She told CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Monday that the meeting “never happened, I was never friends with her, I saw her, she interview us twice, she came to the wedding, and for that story, that’s it, I would not recognize her on the street or ask her why we don’t see her anymore, so that was another thing like people come out saying lies and not true stuff.”
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