Clinton

COSTA MESA — The schedule could hardly be more unusual: Just a little less than two weeks before the election, a Democratic presidential nominee appeared Thursday night in the Republican bastion of Orange County.

But that is the way Campaign ’92 has gone for Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton.

“It’s tough to be a Democrat here, but no more,” Orange County Democratic Chairman Howard Adler said Thursday night as he surveyed the crowd of more than 18,000 who crowded into the Pacific Amphitheatre to cheer Clinton on. On Election Day, Adler added, “We’re going to dance in the streets of Orange County.”

And dance Clinton did–a tad stiffly, perhaps–as he entered the amphitheater to the sound of Whoopi Goldberg and the choir from her recent film “Sister Act” singing “Shout.”

Taking the microphone, Clinton told the enthusiastic crowd that when he first came to Orange County for a much-publicized fund-raiser hosted by local Republicans, people told him Democrats in the area “were an endangered species.” But, he said, he decided to “go tell them (county residents) there’s a new Democratic Party, an old Republican Party, and we’re going to help lift America up together.”

He trotted out a line that his aides hope will become the theme of the campaign’s waning days–one featured in Clinton’s latest television advertisements. President Bush, he said, had promised in 1988 to make things better for Americans. “So let me ask you a question in Orange County–how you doing?”

And he urged his listeners to talk to their neighbors and tell them that “it won’t kill them if they hold their noses this one time and vote for a Democrat, because they’ll like what they get.”

Clinton also deftly defused a heckler who briefly interrupted the start of the speech and, to a chorus of boos, waved a Bush sign.

Noting that the man was wearing a Clinton T-shirt, the candidate said the heckler had “got in here under false pretenses.” Then, referring to Bush and the “Read my lips, no new taxes” pledge that he broke, Clinton said: “This whole crowd travels under false pretenses.”

After speaking for about 20 minutes, Clinton left the stage, walked outside the amphitheater and briefly greeted some of the thousands of supporters who had arrived too late to get a seat at the rally.

Some local Republicans sought to downplay the rally. “You look at those buses, you look at the signs, they’re from up in L.A. or down in the Imperial Valley,” said Assemblyman Mickey Conroy (R-Orange), who was among a group of military veterans protesting Clinton’s appearance. “What you’re seeing is a charade.”

Indeed, Clinton may not actually carry Orange County, which has not voted for a Democratic presidential candidate in 56 years. But polls taken last month showed him running virtually even with Bush among the county’s voters. Fueled in part by this strong showing, Clinton held a 21-percentage-point lead in two recent statewide voter surveys.

And the fact that at this stage in the campaign, a Democrat could stage a rally here and draw a crowd so large that the fire marshal shut off the entrances more than 1 1/2 hours before Clinton arrived, was a stunning display of how the nation’s political map has changed this year.

Sensing that change, the crowd broke into chants of “12 more days” when they weren’t loudly cheering the entertainers that helped warm them up–who aside from Goldberg included Linda Ronstadt, Bruce Hornsby and Paula Poundstone.

For the political half of the evening, the theme was putting the entire Democratic ticket over the top in California. “One is not enough,” Senate candidate Dianne Feinstein told the crowd. “An individual can make a difference, but a team can make a change.”

Barbara Boxer, the Democratic nominee in California’s other Senate race, spent 30 minutes doing satellite television interviews with Clinton that were beamed to other parts of the state before her brief appearance at the rally. “It’s tough out there. There’s been negative politics,” she told the crowd. “Stick with us these 12 more days.”

Clinton, too, stuck to that theme, telling the crowd: “I want you to help me be a better President by electing Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein to the United States Senate.”

As the Nov. 3 vote grows closer, Clinton has become bolder about trying to use his support to achieve goals other than his own election. That was clear not only at the Orange County rally, but at an appearance earlier in the day in Orgeon.

Last month, for example, when Clinton visited the state, he avoided taking a strong stand on Measure 9, the anti-homosexual ballot initiative backed by fundamentalist groups. On Thursday, speaking before an enthusiastic crowd of several thousand packed into and around the University of Oregon gymnasium, Clinton unequivocally condemned it.

“This country has been divided too long and in too many ways,” he said.

Then, to growing cheers, he exhorted the crowd: “Many people look to the West and see tomorrow. They see the shape of tomorrow. I ask you to send a message to America by resoundingly defeating Resolution 9. Vote no.”

Similarly, as Clinton seeks to portray the race as a choice between “can do” Democrats and “can’t do” Republicans, between “the things-could-be-worse crowd and the things-can-be-better crowd,” he has begun making far more direct appeals to his supporters to vote for other Democratic candidates as well.

In recent weeks, Clinton briefly has asked his audiences to vote for local Democratic candidates. But Thursday, for the first time, he made an extended argument for a party victory, asking Oregonians to vote for Democratic Senate candidate Les AuCoin so that as President he would have a filibuster-proof 60-member majority in the Senate.

“If you elect me on Nov. 3,” he said, “I need help to implement that program for change.”

Amid the cheering crowds, Clinton aides do their best to keep their guard up. Having watched near-disaster overtake them repeatedly in the winter and spring, this group has learned at least one lesson clearly–yesterday’s dream can become today’s nightmare.

And Clinton advisers do worry about a voter backlash if they appear to be taking the election for granted. “What worries me more than anything is that voters will feel disenfranchised by a media that tells them this thing is over,” Clinton strategist Paul Begala said.

Today on the Trail . . .

Gov. Bill Clinton campaigns in Las Vegas, Fayetteville, Ark., and Springfield, Mo.

President Bush campaigns in Lexington and London, Ky., and Miami and Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.

Ross Perot has no public events scheduled.

TELEVISION

Vice President Dan Quayle is a guest on NBC’s “Today” at 7 a.m. PDT.

First Lady Barbara Bush is a guest on ABC’s “Good Morning America” at 8 a.m. PDT. and a guest on CNN’s “Larry King Live” at 6 p.m. PDT.

Perot airs a new 30-minute commercial on NBC at 8 p.m. PDT.

C-SPAN may air repeats of the presidential debates. For updated program schedules, call C-SPAN at 202-628-2205.

Reviving an idea they floated last year with an op-ed urging President Obama not to seek a second term, pollsters Patrick H. Caddell and Douglas E. Schoen are out Monday with a new op-ed drafting Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to be the Democrats’ 2012 nominee.

Obama should “abandon his candidacy for reelection in favor of a clear alternative,” Caddell and Schoen wrote in Monday’s Wall Street Journal, because “the kind of campaign required for the president’s political survival would make it almost impossible for him to govern — not only during the campaign, but throughout a second term.”

“Never before has there been such an obvious potential successor — one who has been a loyal and effective member of the president’s administration, who has the stature to take on the office, and who is the only leader capable of uniting the country around a bipartisan economic and foreign policy,” they wrote of Clinton.

The two pollsters have worked for a number of high-profile Democrats — Caddell for George McGovern, Jimmy Carter and Joe Biden, and Schoen for President Bill Clinton and for Hillary Clinton in 2008. But they are also known for taking positions that are at odds with the Democratic Party.

Most recently, Schoen has worked with a group called Americans Elect to put a third candidate on the ballot in all 50 states.

The group plans to hold a nominating convention next summer to select a candidate to challenge Obama and the Republican nominee. Participants will draft candidates by putting their names to a Web-based vote. Hillary Clinton and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg — another former client of Schoen’s — are often mentioned as potential nominees.

Like they did last year in an op-ed for the Washington Post, Caddell and Schoen argue that running for reelection will prevent Obama from governing.

“By going down the reelection road and into partisan mode, the president has effectively guaranteed that the remainder of his term will be marred by the resentment and division that have eroded our national identity, common purpose, and most of all, our economic strength,” they wrote.

The pollster duo believes that: “If President Obama were to withdraw he would put great pressure on the Republicans to come to the table and negotiate — especially if the president singularly focused in the way we have suggested on the economy, job creation, and debt and deficit reduction. “

They argue that Clinton would stand a better chance at winning in 2012 because she enjoys her best-ever approval rating and is favored over Republican candidates Mitt Romney and Rick Perry in a Time magazine poll. And they call on Sen. Harry Reid and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to urge Obama to step aside “for the good of the party and most of all for the good of the country.”

Hillary Clinton has repeatedly said that she has no ambitions to run again for president. She has brushed aside talk of replacing Joe Biden as the vice presidential nominee on the Democrats’ ticket.

“I’m out of politics, happy to be out of politics,” she said last week when asked by NBC’s Chuck Todd to weigh in on the field of Republican hopefuls.

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MIAMI — A statement issued by Cuban-American powerbroker Jorge Mas Canosa after a meeting earlier this week with Democrat Bill Clinton has caused a furor among Republicans here while fueling speculation that defectors from what was once considered the most solid of Republican voting blocs could help give Florida’s 25 electoral votes to the Democrats for the first time since 1976.

Mas, chairman of the Cuban American National Foundation, went to Tampa on Tuesday to thank Clinton for his support of the anti-Castro Cuban Democracy Act. In a statement signed by Mas and three other CANF directors, Mas went on to say: “Any fears that the Cuban-American community may have had about a Clinton Administration with regard to Castro’s Cuba have dissipated today.”

Many interpreted Mas’ remarks as all but blessing Cuban-Americans who wanted to vote for Clinton. Republican stalwarts expressed surprise and dismay over what some characterized as a betrayal.

“I have a serious problem with (the statement),” said Alberto Cardenas, co-chairman of the Bush-Quayle campaign in Dade County and a co-founder of CANF. “Advising the Cuban-American voter that Clinton is an acceptable choice is without merit, and at best premature, and doesn’t speak well for 12 years of Republican support. I told that to Mr. Mas.”

Democrats downplayed Mas’ influence, insisting a slight shift was under way long before the meeting.

“Cuban-American voters could make the difference, could be that swing vote,” said Grace Prieto, a coordinator with the Clinton-Gore campaign in Dade County. “Dukakis got about 7% of the Cuban-American vote in 1988. I am sure that this time the Democrats will get 25% to 30%.”

Statewide, the race between the Arkansas governor and President Bush is rated pretty much a tossup, and Cuban-American voters make up only 4% of the Florida total.

Still, according to a poll released Tuesday by Mason-Dixon Political/Media Research, what was once an overwhelming majority for Bush among Cuban-Americans has begun to erode, from 73% to 55%. Meanwhile, Clinton’s support among the same group rose from 19% to 36%.

Those poll results were released about the same time that Mas was meeting privately with Clinton in Tampa, and do not reflect the subsequent political fallout from his statement.

Mas, along with several CANF directors, met with Clinton after the Democratic candidate addressed 18,000 people at a rally. Also present at the meeting were Rep. Dante B. Fascell (D-Fla.) and Maria Arias, Clinton’s Cuban-born sister-in-law.

Mas’ overture to Clinton was widely seen as a political hedge by an ambitious man who has made no secret of his intention to be a leading player–perhaps even president–in a post-Castro Cuba.

But his conciliatory statement caused such an uproar among so many Cubans here that Mas went on a Spanish-language radio station Thursday to affirm his support for Bush. “My affiliation is Republican, my vote is for President Bush, but my work for Cuba is much more important than my partisan preferences,” he said during an interview over radio station WQBA.

Mas’ political maneuvering “is the topic in the Cuban community,” said Los Angeles-based political pollster Sergio Bendixen, working here for the Univision television network. “Many people feel it was treason for (Mas) to suggest it might to OK to vote for Democrats, perceived for many years as next to Communists. Others accept that Mas’ one objective is the liberty of Cuba, and see it as a genius move.”

Prieto said she has been busy assuring Cuban-American Democrats that the controversial Mas “will not control the Clinton Administration.” Mas’ goal, added Prieto, “is to persist as leader if Bill Clinton wins, and keep power and control.”

Arias, a Miami attorney married to Hugh Rodham, Hillary Clinton’s brother, said: “We welcome any statements from Mas or anyone else who says they believe in Bill Clinton. My reading is that he does have impact. I don’t think (his statement) can hurt.”

Tomas Garcia Fuste, news director of WQBA, said he believes that Bush’s son, Jeb, a Miami businessman, is the difference. “He is a good friend here. Cuban-Americans are Republicans, no matter what happens.”

In its report on the controversy, the Miami Herald mentioned rumors that before traveling to Tampa to meet with Clinton, Mas was confronted at his home by an angry Jeb Bush, who demanded that he not go. In the same account, Jeb Bush denied that any confrontation took place.

MIAMI — Democratic presidential nominee Bill Clinton appealed to his fellow Southerners’ sense of pride Tuesday, telling an assembly of the region’s state legislators that GOP entreaties to “traditional values” placed President Bush in the White House but produced little benefit to their states.

“We never got anywhere, anywhere, anywhere in our part of the country by being sucker-punched (with) appeals to our traditional values,” Clinton said in a speech to the Southern Legislative Conference meeting in Miami.

“Let us vote on our traditional values,” he said. “Let us live our traditional values. Let us lift up our whole country by starting in the South and saying, ‘Give us a new direction for our country.’ ”

Clinton’s remarks were intended to pry the region’s voters away from the GOP and to recapture the ballots of conservative Southerners. That strategy has been the linchpin of Clinton’s campaign because Democrats have won neither the region nor the White House since 1976–when Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter did so. Like Carter, who beat President Gerald R. Ford, Clinton is the governor of a Southern state: Arkansas.

Although Clinton seemed to play up his audience’s Southern pride, his comments also hinted at the sense of inferiority frequently directed at the region.

He acknowledged that education gaps, racial discord and economic production have held back advancement in states located below the Mason-Dixon line, but suggested the region has dealt with those problems with more candor and openness than other parts of the country.

“Don’t you think the South has come a long way in the last few years?” Clinton said, citing foreign investments, lessened racial tensions and improved student academic achievement. “It’s something I think most of us are pretty proud of. I know our region still has a higher percentage of poor folks than other regions of the country, but we’ve made a lot of progress.”

Appearing before the bipartisan organization of lawmakers and their staffs, Clinton rarely mentioned Bush by name. But he criticized the record of his Administration and his party–which has controlled the White House for the last 12 years–saying the GOP had failed to improve health care in the South and across the nation.

“You ask the people you represent not to throw their vote away on the kind of rhetoric the people have gotten those of us in the South to be a sucker for for decades,” he told the legislators. “Let’s show them there is a New South and we’re a lot smarter than they think we are, and that whoever gets our votes this time will have to respond to our hopes for our children.”

Clinton also discussed his health care proposals, including a so-called “play-or-pay” plan that aims to insure every American. Firms would either have to “play” by providing health insurance to their employees, or pay into a federal fund that would cover those without insurance.

His plan would also require insurance-company reforms and cuts in unnecessary paperwork that boost medical costs without improving benefits.

“Otherwise, you’re going to have more and more and these (insurance firms) dividing up the health insurance markets to where the very ideal thing (they) can do is to insure a group of 15- to 25-year-old women, who spend two hours a day in the gym, don’t smoke, don’t drink, don’t eat hamburgers, (and are) going to live forever. It’s their only way to save money.”

Clinton also attacked Bush’s proposal to give vouchers to the poor and tax breaks to the middle class to help buy health insurance. “The (President’s) benefits are completely consumed by cost increases in a year,” Clinton contended.

Health and Human Services Secretary Louis W. Sullivan also spoke to the group, defending Bush’s health care proposal. Sullivan, who preceded Clinton to the podium, gave the Democrat an opportunity to criticize White House policy without heaping abuse on the Cabinet’s only black.

“He’s a good fellow,” Clinton said of Sullivan. “He’s just got a heavy load to carry.”

Clinton elicited his only standing ovation when he described how Bush would try to link him to the Democrats’ past during the Republican Convention next week.

“You know as well as I do what’s about to happen,” he said, grinning broadly. “The other side is going to go down there to Houston and tell you (vice presidential nominee) Al Gore and I may have been born in Arkansas and Tennessee, but we’re just a bunch of crazy, wild-eyed liberals. They’re going to tell you that (Democrats) took us to New York City in a safe . . . and incubated us there for 20 years. We got their crazy ideas, came home and hid them for 20 years waiting for the opportunity to spring them on the rest of the country.”

As the audience roared with laughter and applause, Clinton continued mocking his opponents’ strategy:

“They’re going to say every speech I gave on the Fourth of July in northeast Arkansas was a deliberate attempt to conceal my radical impulses. And we just can’t wait to get into power in Washington, where we can take your guns away and trample family values and raise taxes on every poor, working person in America.

“I can hear them now.”

The Democratic campaign also swept through New England on Tuesday as Gore toured a leading computer firm in Cambridge, Mass., saying that high technology will create jobs and keep America competitive into the 21st Century.

“It translates into real jobs for real people,” Gore said, surrounded by colorful supercomputers capable of making computations at unprecedented speeds. “It sounds a little high-tech. And it is high-tech. . . . But in the competition we now face in the world marketplace, we’ve got to be willing to move ahead and create the jobs of the future.”

Gore delivered his remarks during a visit to Thinking Machines Corp., a nine-year-old firm that makes the most powerful computers in use today.

Times staff writer Edwin Chen contributed to this story.

Befriending Bill and Hillary Clinton — and giving them access to his private 757 jet — gave Ron Burkle more insight into world affairs than any graduate program might have.

At one point the billionaire businessman was on half of all the trips the former president made abroad. Burkle says he met 47 world leaders in 47 countries. There was a private meeting Clinton held with Nelson Mandela that went on for hours; Burkle was in the room.

Burkle, who never finished college, says he found the travel so enlightening that he structured his son’s schooling around it, arranging for a private tutor to join them on the jet so his child could join the international trips with Clinton.

“I’m not a political junkie,” Burkle said. “I’m not trying to become an ambassador or be in the middle of every election every cycle. … A lot of people are in it because they want to go to the parties or be on the Kennedy Center Board. It is not about that for me.”

Burkle talked about the experiences during an expansive interview with the Los Angeles Times this week, in which he also expressed ambivalence about Hillary Clinton’s candidacy, reflected on his now-dissolved $15-million business partnership with Bill Clinton and explained why he is cohosting a fundraiser for Republican presidential candidate John Kasich.

The trips became a springboard for the billionaire jetsetter to put his own mark on international affairs. UCLA is home to the Burkle Center for International Relations, now prominent on the circuit of world leaders and diplomats visiting Los Angeles.

The investor talks about politics as a kind of entryway to more interesting people and pursuits.

In the case of Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), his enthusiasm for her career led him into a friendship with her husband, Richard Blum, a fellow billionaire who also has a taste for adventure and international exploration.

“I just think her husband is a fascinating and complex guy,” Burkle said. “He spends time with the Dalai Lama. He has a foundation in the Himalayas. … He and I just became friends.”

Burkle, who is perhaps the world’s most successful supermarket magnate, says he began working in his dad’s store at an early age and spent his life singularly focused on working and investing until well into his 30s.

“I wasn’t curious about anything but work and making money,” he said. “Then I got curious about art. I got curious about politics and international relations.”

Like most big donors, he says there was nothing transactional at all about his plunge into high-stakes political giving. And as is typically the case, such protestations are met with skepticism. The close political relationships have been undeniably good for his business.

NEWSLETTER: Get the day’s top headlines from Times Editor Davan Maharaj >>

Burkle has boosted the careers of politicians who went on to control pension funds that invest massive amounts with his firm, Yucaipa. He’s had a former president on his payroll, ostensibly able to open doors nobody else can.

When Burkle did not want embarrassing details in his divorce records available to the public, California lawmakers and a governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, to whom he had been donating generously passed a state law allowing him to seal them.

Burkle insisted the legislation was not crafted at his behest, but it became known in Sacramento as the “Burkle bill” nonetheless.

Now, his value to Democratic politics lies not just in his checkbook — but also in his house.

The property known as Greenacres, once owned by silent film star Harold Lloyd, is host to some three dozen fundraising events each year, often for Democrats or progressive causes.

Burkle estimates more than $200 million has been raised there for candidates and nonprofits since he moved in in the 1990s.

Even fellow high-rollers in Hollywood, who grumble that Burkle never stepped up to write multimillion dollar checks to super PACs the way other liberal billionaires have, lament that Hillary Clinton does not currently have access to the fundraising machine that is Greenacres.

“I bought a house that has its own life, independent of me,” Burkle said.

He became enamored with the property when he attended a fundraiser there. The event, he recalls, was very much an introduction to life on the high-stakes political fundraising circuit, particularly in Los Angeles.

“The first time I went to a fundraiser there, the tickets were $1,000 and $5,000,” he said. “I asked, ‘What’s the difference?’ They said, ‘Parking.’ ”

Burkle’s ambivalence about Hillary Clinton’s candidacy is puzzling to other Democratic power players.

The Clintons are well known to value loyalty. And Burkle may ultimately test whether he can step back in the inner circle after stepping so far out of it. He’s raising money for Kasich but leaving open the possibility that he will rejoin the Clintons soon enough.

One story Burkle shared about an interaction with Hillary Clinton when she first ran for president in 2008 — and he helped her raise millions of dollars — suggests he’s well aware of the kind of loyalty the Clintons expect.

Burkle recalled that she was bewildered when Bill Richardson, who had been secretary of Energy in the Clinton administration, began publicly contemplating not supporting her White House bid — which he ultimately did not.

Burkle said then Sen. Clinton called him between votes on the floor of the Senate.

Burkle recalled: “She asked me: ‘Is he really not going to vote for me? Bill watched the Super bowl with him.’ ”

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Posters calling for the release of the Epstein files are displayed on a wall in Washington, D.C., in September. On Friday, President Donald Trump announced on social media that he wants an investigation into former President Bill Clinton’s involvement with Jeffrey Epstein, along with others. File Photo by Annabelle Gordon/UPI | License Photo

Nov. 14 (UPI) — President Donald Trump posted on social media Friday that he wants an investigation into former President Bill Clinton and others mentioned in the Jeffrey Epstein emails released this week.

On Wednesday, Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee released a cache of emails between convicted sex traffickers Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell and others that talked about Trump repeatedly. The emails were released by Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., the ranking Democrat on the committee.

“Now that the Democrats are using the Epstein Hoax, involving Democrats, not Republicans, to try and deflect from their disastrous SHUTDOWN, and all of their other failures, I will be asking [Attorney General] Pam Bondi, and the Department of Justice, together with our great patriots at the FBI, to investigate Jeffrey Epstein’s involvement and relationship with Bill Clinton, Larry Summers, Reid Hoffman, J.P. Morgan, Chase, and many other people and institutions, to determine what was going on with them, and him,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “This is another Russia, Russia, Russia Scam, with all arrows pointing to the Democrats. Records show that these men, and many others, spent large portions of their life with Epstein, and on his ‘Island.’ Stay tuned!!!”

Summers was Clinton’s treasury secretary and an economic adviser to former President Barack Obama. Hoffman co-founded LinkedIn and donates to Democrats.

JP Morgan Chase issued a statement in response. Spokeswoman Patricia Wexler said in a statement it “ended our relationship with him years before his arrest on sex trafficking charges.”

“The government had damning information about his crimes and failed to share it with us or other banks,” Wexler said. “We regret any association we had with the man, but did not help him commit his heinous acts.”

The White House continued to defend the president.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Wednesday, “These stories are nothing more than bad-faith efforts to distract from President Trump’s historic accomplishments, and any American with common sense sees right through this hoax and clear distraction from the government opening back up again.”

The House of Representatives is expected to pass legislation that demands the government release all files related to Epstein, who died by suicide in a jail cell. The discharge petition has enough signatures now that Rep. Adelita Grijalva, D-Ariz., was sworn in. Though it should pass the House, it’s not certain to pass the Senate.

When Donald Trump apologized for saying in 2005 that he could grope women because of his celebrity, he immediately pointed to Bill Clinton as having done worse. Trump appeared before a debate alongside Clinton’s accusers and again mentioned the former president’s past while onstage with Hillary Clinton. But Trump’s argument was undercut when more women publicly came forward with allegations that he had groped or kissed them without consent.

Here’s a look at the pasts of both Trump and Bill Clinton and accusations against them.

Donald Trump

1977, 31-year-old Trump

Trump marries his first wife, Ivana Trump

Donald Trump Jr. is born

Early-1980s, 30-something Donald Trump

Allegation: While Trump was seated next to her on a plane, businesswoman Jessica Leeds said, he lifted her armrest and touched her inappropriately.

“He was like an octopus,” Leeds, now 74, told the New York Times. “His hands were everywhere.”

Response: Trump called it a “ridiculous tale.” At a rally in North Carolina, he said, “She would not be my first choice.”

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/786560925113266176

1981, 35-year-old Trump

Ivanka Trump is born.

1984, 38-year-old Trump

Eric Trump is born.

1989, 43-year-old Trump

Allegation: Ivana Trump used the word “rape” in a 1992 deposition during their divorce to describe an encounter with Trump when they were married in 1989. In 2015, after the allegation resurfaced, she said it was “without merit” and that she had made it “at a time of very high tension during my divorce from Donald.”

Response: After the allegation resurfaced last summer, Michael Cohen, a lawyer for the Trump Organization, incorrectly said that a man cannot legally rape his wife. Many states have laws outlawing marital rape. Trump distanced himself from that statement.

Early 1990s, 40-something Trump

Allegation: Kristin Anderson told the Washington Post that when she was at a Manhattan nightclub, someone sitting next to her “touched her vagina through her underwear.” Anderson said she fled the couch and only then realized it was Trump. 

Response: “Mr. Trump strongly denies this phony allegation by someone looking to get some free publicity. It is totally ridiculous,” Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks said to the Post.

1991, 44-year-old Trump

Ivana Trump files for divorce.

1992, 45-year-old Trump

Accusation: Donald Trump reportedly talked about dating young girls once they reached maturity. A 1992 wire service report said he joked to 14-year-old girls that he’d be dating them “in a few years.” In CBS footage from around the same time, he says of a 10-year-old girl that he’d be “dating her in 10 years.”  

Response: Trump has not commented specifically on those allegations.

Accusation: Jill Harth filed a sexual assault lawsuit against Trump, alleging that while working on a beauty competition with him, he harassed her to the point of what she called “attempted rape.”

“He pushed me up against the wall, and had his hands all over me and tried to get up my dress again,” she told the Guardian. “And I had to physically say: ‘What are you doing? Stop it.’”

Response: In an interview with CNN on Friday, Trump said he was the victim of a political smear campaign.

1993, 46-year-old Trump

Tiffany Trump is born.

Trump marries Marla Maples.

1997, 50-year-old Trump

Trump and Marla Maples separate.

Accusation: Temple Taggart told the New York Times that when she was Miss Utah, Trump kissed her on the lips without consent.

Response: Trump has denied the allegations.

1998, 51-year-old Trump

Accusation: During a press conference with Gloria Allred on Thursday, Karena Virginia said Trump approached her after the 1998 U.S. Open tennis tournament in Flushing, N.Y. He then grabbed her arm and touched her breast.

 “Don’t you know who I am?” Virginia said Trump asked her when she flinched.

Response: “Gloria Allred, in another coordinated, publicity seeking attack with the Clinton campaign, will stop at nothing to smear Mr. Trump,” Trump spokeswoman Jessica Ditto said. “Give me a break. Voters are tired of these circus-like antics and reject these fictional stories and the clear efforts to benefit Hillary Clinton.”

1999, 52-year-old Trump

Trump and Marla Maples divorce

2003, 56-year-old Trump

Accusation: Mindy McGillivray says Trump groped her at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida while she was working with a photographer at the site. She was 23.

Response: Trump has denied the allegations.

2005, 58-year-old Trump

Trump marries Melania Trump

Allegation: Trump makes lewd comments about groping women. 

Response: Apologized, calling it “locker room talk,” while dismissing it as a distraction.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/785842546878578688

Accusation: Natasha Stoynoff of People magazine says Trump groped her while she was waiting for Melania Trump to return for an interview.

“Within seconds, he was pushing me against the wall, and forcing his tongue down my throat,”

Response: Trump called the story a “total lie.”

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/786554517680693248?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

Accusation: Rachel Crooks says Trump kissed her without permission outside an elevator bank at Trump Tower in Manhattan when she was 22.

Response: Trump denied the allegations. When questioned by a New York Times reporter, he told the journalist, “You are a disgusting human being.”

2006, 59-year-old Trump

Barron Trump is born.

Allegation: During a Saturday press conference with Gloria Allred, adult film star Jessica Drake said she met Trump in 2006 at a golf tournament in Lake Tahoe where she said he made sexual advances toward her and two friends.

“When we entered the room he grabbed each of us tightly in a hug and kissed each one of us without asking permission,” Drake said, releasing a posed photo she took with Trump at the event.

Drake said that later, Trump or a “male speaking on his behalf” offered her $10,000 and use of his private jet for sex. She said she declined.

Response: “This story is totally false and ridiculous. The picture is one of thousands taken out of respect for people asking to have their picture taken with Mr. Trump,” Trump’s campaign said in a statement. “Mr. Trump does not know this person, does not remember this person and would have no interest in ever knowing her.”

2007, 60-year-old Trump

Accusation: Former “Apprentice” contestant Summer Zervos says Trump invited her into his bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel and proceeded to kiss her against her will, groped her and shoved his genitals towards her.

Response: “To be clear, I never met her at a hotel or greeted her inappropriately a decade ago. That is not who I am as a person, and it is not how I’ve conducted my life,” Trump said in a statement.

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Bill Clinton

1975, 29-year-old Bill Clinton

Bill Clinton marries Hillary Rodham.

Mid-1970s to 1992, 30- to 40-something Clinton

Allegation: Dolly Kyle Browning, a high school friend of Clinton’s, said she had an occasional sexual relationship with him over about 15 years. 

Response: Clinton has not publicly responded. 

1978, 32-year-old Clinton

Allegation: Juanita Broaddrick said in 1999 that when Clinton was Arkansas governor, he invited her to a hotel room where she said he kissed, then raped her.

Response: Clinton denied the allegations.

1980, 34-year-old Clinton

Chelsea Clinton is born.

1982, 36-year-old Clinton

Allegation: In 1998, Elizabeth Ward Gracen said she had had a consensual one-night stand with Clinton when he was Arkansas governor in 1982. It was the same year she won the title of Miss America.

Response: Clinton denied the allegations.

1983, 37-year-old Clinton

Allegation: In 1994, 1958’s Miss Arkansas, Sally Perdue, said she had an affair with Clinton the previous year. She claimed that a Democratic staffer told her not to reveal any information, and was warned “they knew that I went jogging by myself and he couldn’t guarantee what would happen to my pretty little legs.”

Response: He has not publicly responded to the allegation.

1991, 44-year-old Clinton

Allegation: Paula Jones said a state trooper asked her to meet then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton in his hotel room. Jones said that Clinton dropped his pants and underwear and told her to “kiss it.” She refused.

Jones sued Clinton for sexual harassment in 1998, prompting the investigation that culminated in the revelation of Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky. 

Response: Clinton settled a sexual harassment suit with Jones with no apology or admission of guilt. 

1980-1992, 45-year-old Clinton

Allegation: During Clinton’s presidential campaign in 1992, Gennifer Flowers said she had had a 12-year sexual relationship with him.

Response: Clinton admitted to a sexual affair with Flowers while under oath in 1998.

1993, 46-year-old Bill Clinton

Allegation: In 1998, Kathleen Willey alleged Clinton groped her without permission in the Oval Office.

Response: Clinton denied the encounter while under oath in 1998.

1995-1996, 49-year-old Bill Clinton

Allegation: Monica Lewinsky’s affair with Bill Clinton surfaced in 1998, when Lewinsky’s friend Linda Tripp learned that she had signed an affidavit in the Paula Jones case denying her relationship with Clinton. Tripp handed secret recordings of Lewinsky’s account of the affair to investigator Kenneth Starr.

Response: Clinton initially denied the allegations. 

“I did not have sexual relations with that woman,” he said famously. 

Clinton later admitted to the affair, and the House of Representatives voted to impeach him.

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Updated at 11:10 a.m. on Oct. 24, 2016: This story was updated with Jessica Drake’s statements.

Updated at 1:20 p.m. on Oct. 20, 2016: This story was updated with Karena Virginia’s statements.

This article was originally published at 3:35 p.m. on Oct. 19, 2016.

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[email protected]

Twitter: @cshalby

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NEW YORK — Acceding to President Trump’s demands, U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi said Friday that she has ordered a top federal prosecutor to investigate sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s ties to Trump political foes, including former President Clinton.

Bondi posted on X that she was assigning Manhattan U.S. Atty. Jay Clayton to lead the probe, capping an eventful week in which congressional Republicans released nearly 23,000 pages of documents from Epstein’s estate and House Democrats seized on emails mentioning Trump.

Trump, who was friends with Epstein for years, didn’t explain what supposed crimes he wanted the Justice Department to investigate. None of the men he mentioned in a social media post demanding the probe has been accused of sexual misconduct by any of Epstein’s victims.

Hours before Bondi’s announcement, Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that he would ask her, the Justice Department and the FBI to investigate Epstein’s “involvement and relationship” with Clinton and others, including former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and LinkedIn founder and Democratic donor Reid Hoffman.

Trump, calling the matter “the Epstein Hoax, involving Democrats, not Republicans,” said the investigation should also include financial giant JPMorgan Chase, which provided banking services to Epstein, and “many other people and institutions.”

“This is another Russia, Russia, Russia Scam, with all arrows pointing to the Democrats,” the Republican president wrote, referring to special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of alleged Russian interference in Trump’s 2016 election victory over Bill Clinton’s wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Big names in Epstein’s emails

Trump, Bill Clinton, Summers and Hoffman were all mentioned in the documents released this week — a collection of emails Epstein exchanged with friends and business associates, news articles, book excerpts, legal papers and other material.

Epstein kept in touch with Summers and Hoffman via email, according to the documents, and wrote to other people about Trump and Clinton being in his company at various times over the years — though nothing in the messages suggested any wrongdoing on the men’s part.

Clinton has acknowledged traveling on Epstein’s private jet but has said through a spokesperson that he had no knowledge of the late financier’s crimes. Neither Clinton nor Trump has been accused of wrongdoing by any of the women who say Epstein abused them.

Summers, who served in Clinton’s Cabinet and is a former Harvard University president, previously said in a statement that he has “great regrets in my life” and that “my association with Jeffrey Epstein was a major error of judgment.”

Messages seeking comment were left for Hoffman through his investment firm, Greylock, and with a spokesperson for JPMorgan Chase.

After Epstein’s sex trafficking arrest in 2019, Hoffman said he’d had only a few interactions with Epstein, all related to his fundraising for MIT’s Media Lab. He nevertheless apologized, saying that “by agreeing to participate in any fundraising activity where Epstein was present, I helped to repair his reputation and perpetuate injustice.”

None of Epstein’s victims has accused Hoffman of misconduct.

Bondi, in her post, praised Clayton as “one of the most capable and trusted prosecutors in the country” and said the Justice Department “will pursue this with urgency and integrity to deliver answers to the American people.”

Clayton, the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission during Trump’s first term, took over in April as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York — the same office that indicted Epstein and won a sex trafficking conviction against Epstein’s longtime confidante, Ghislaine Maxwell, in 2021.

Trump changes course on Epstein files

Trump has raised questions about Epstein’s death in jail a month after his arrest and suggested while campaigning last year that he’d seek to open up the government’s case files.

But Trump has changed course in recent months — blaming Democrats and painting the matter as a “hoax” — amid questions about his own friendship with Epstein and what knowledge he may have had about Epstein’s years-long exploitation of underage girls.

On Wednesday, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released three Epstein email exchanges that referenced Trump, including one from 2019 in which Epstein said the president “knew about the girls” and another from 2011 in which he said Trump had “spent hours” at his house with a sex trafficking victim.

The emails did not say what Trump knew and did not give any details of what Trump did while at Epstein’s house. White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt accused Democrats of having “selectively leaked emails” to “create a fake narrative to smear President Trump.”

Soon after, Republicans on the committee disclosed what they said was an additional 20,000 pages of documents from Epstein’s estate. Among them were emails Epstein wrote, including many where he commented — often unfavorably — on Trump’s rise in politics and corresponded with journalists.

Other emails show Epstein keeping up friendly relationships with academic and business leaders, including Summers and Hoffman, well after he pleaded guilty in 2008 and served 13 months in jail for procuring a person under 18 for prostitution.

Epstein and Summers discussed politics, arranged calls with each other and spoke on more intimate matters, according to the emails, including about a woman Summers had interactions with. Epstein’s advice to him: “You care very much for this person. You might want to demonstrate that.”

Sisak and Bedayn write for the Associated Press.