Donald Trump hosted wild parties in the 1990s that would run for several days and involved illegal activities including drug use and sex with underage girls, according to a new report published by The Daily Beast on Monday.
Here’s what you need to know about this, the latest Trump scandal allegation.
1. The Reporter Who Broke the Story Has Covered Trump for Decades
Michael Gross, author of the story titled, “Inside Donald Trump’s One-Stop Parties: Attendees Recall Cocaine and Very Young Models,” recounted many interviews and encounters with Trump.
“I’ve been covering Trump since 1985, when I worked for The New York Times’ women’s pages,” Gross wrote. “He talked to me about sex and substances and the substance of the arena in which he made his name, real estate. I published all of it. In 1999, he told me that in 1995 he’d been worth about negative $900 million. I didn’t have the chops to think to ask for his tax returns.”
2. Girls as Young as 15 Were At the Parties, One Source Said
Most of the women and girls at the parties were aspiring models, and Trump was enthralled with the fashion industry which he saw as a “date farm.” Gross quoted a fashion photographer who chose not to reveal his name, but attended the parties in the 1990s at the Plaza Hotel in New York City, a hotel owned by Trump at the time.
“Trump was in and out. He’d wander off with a couple girls,” the man recalled. “I saw him. He was getting laid like crazy. Trump was at the heart of it. He loved the attention and in private, he was a total f———g beast.”
The photographer added that girls as young as 15 attended Trump’s parties, and were “over their heads, they had no idea, and they ended up in situations.”
Another source, Andy Lucchesi, said that he organized some of Trump’s parties, and said that Trump — who was married to his second wife, Marla Maples, at the time, had sex with women at the parties whose ages were undetermined.
“A lot of girls (who are) 14 look 24. That’s as juicy as I can get,” Lucchesi told Gross.
3. Trump Allowed Illegal Drugs at the Parties — But No Cigarettes
Trump loathed the idea of smoking and banned cigarettes from the parties, but did allow a variety of illegal substances, including cocaine, that were given by men at the parties to the women and girls in attendance.
“It was guys with younger girls, sex, a lot of sex, a lot of cocaine, top-shelf liquor,” but no cigarettes allowed, the unnamed photographer told Gross.
4. Trump Called Sexual Promiscuity, “My Second Business”
In an earlier Daily Beast article, Gross reported that Trump would use the sex-and-drugs parties to seal business deals.
Trump later opened his own modeling agency, Trump Model Management, that remains in business today — though Trump pays little attention to the business anymore, according to Gross, and when he does show up at the modeling agency offices, refuses to speak to his employees there.
Gross reported that Trump referred in an interview to his own sexual promiscuity as “my second business.”
5. Trump’s Own Daughter Entered the Modeling Business as a Teen.
Now age 34 and a successful fashion entrepreneur in her own right, Trump’s daughter Ivanka — by his first wife, Ivana Trump — has become one of the most familiar faces in Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign entourage.
But in 1997 when she was just 15, Ivanka decided to become a model herself and her father, despite what he knew firsthand about the treatment of underage girls in the modeling industry, gave her the green light, albeit somewhat reluctantly.
“I am only modestly in favor of this because I understand that that life is a very fast life, and at that age it is always a risky proposition,” Trump told The New York Times in a 1997 interview.
Ivanka herself was unworried, or so she said at the time.
“I live for the moment,” sh told the Times. “I do not fear the future because I think every experience makes you stronger. I am the kind of person who has no regrets.”
Whether Ivanka ever turned up at her father’s controversial parties is doubtful, but remains unclear.