Longtime Trump Adviser Was Accused of Repeatedly Groping Women in Nightclub
This may come as a shock, but someone close to Donald Trump was accused of sexual misconduct.
A woman accused Boris Epshteyn, an adviser to the former president, of groping her and her sister at an Arizona nightclub in 2021, according to police body camera footage obtained by The Arizona Republic.
The video shows police interviewing the woman who lodged the complaint. “All night he’s been touching me and my sister, especially my sister,” she says. “He kind of cornered her and grabbed her and is just making her super uncomfortable. … Touching her chest, touching her hips, touching her crotch.”
“It was creepy,” the woman adds, explaining that her sister repeatedly told Epshteyn to stop.
The officers ultimately have Epshteyn sit on the curb outside the club, where he denies touching anyone inappropriately before refusing to answer questions. The officers then arrest him for disorderly conduct, handcuffing him and leading him into a police van.
Epshteyn was charged with “assault touching,” “attempted sexual abuse,” “harassment-repeated acts,” and “disorderly conduct-disruptive behavior or fighting,” according to The Arizona Republic, to whom Epshteyn declined to comment. The first three charges were dismissed, but he pleaded guilty to the fourth and served probation.
Epshteyn has long been a close adviser to Trump. He worked on both the 2016 and 2020 campaigns, and was by Trump’s side when he was arraigned in Manhattan earlier this year on charges related to his effort to keep porn star Stormy Daniels quiet about an alleged affair ahead of the 2016 election.
Epshteyn was also involved in the effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election, and evidence suggests he could be one of Trump’s unnamed co-conspirators listed in the Justice Department’s indictment of the former president earlier this month. The New York Times pointed out similarities between a Dec. 2020 email exchanged between Epshteyn and Trump’s then-lawyer Rudy Giuliani, and a message the indictment notes Giuliani exchanged with “Co-Conspirator 6.” The indictment describes the sixth and only yet-to-be-identified co-conspirator as “a political consultant who helped implement a plan to submit fraudulent slates of presidential electors to obstruct the certification proceeding,” which certainly could be Epshteyn.
Epshteyn and Giuliani share more in common than working on the effort to overturn the election. The former New York City mayor has also been accused of sexual misconduct, with Noelle Dunphy, former staffer as his firm, suing him for sexual harassment earlier this year. Dunphy released audio transcripts of Giuliani in another filing earlier this month. “Come here, big tits,” Giuliani says on one occasion, according to the transcript. “Come here, big tits. Your tits belong to me. Give them to me [indiscernable]. I want to claim my tits. I want to claim my tits. I want to claim my tits. These are my tits.” (A spokesperson for Giuliani said his relationship with Dunphy was “consensual” while questioning her motivations.)
Trump has also, of course, been accused of sexual misconduct by several women. The former president in May was found liable for defamation and battery of E. Jean Carroll, who has accused him of raping her.