In 2005, journalist Natasha Stoynoff flew to Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, to interview Donald Trump and his wife Melania for People magazine.
The trio met at about 2.30pm on December 27, at a patio next to a pool at the swanky Trump-owned mansion.
Natasha's article was to mark the couple's first anniversary and the upcoming birth of their first child together, with Melania mere months away from giving birth to Barron, who was born the following March.
In an interview with The Atlantic, Natasha shared that 15 minutes into the interview, Melania went upstairs to change her clothes and prepare for the next photo.
WATCH: Natasha Stoynoff shares her story with People TV, after her piece about Donald Trump was published. Post continues after video.
Trump then allegedly turned to Natasha and asked if he could show her a room in the resort. It was "tremendous" and she just had to see it.
"Sure," she replied, not thinking much of it. She'd been assigned the 'Trump beat' at People magazine for a few years now, and had covered his time on The Apprentice, attended his wedding to Melania, and visited Trump Tower.
Up until then, she had a friendly but professional relationship with the future president, and besides, his wife was upstairs changing. She thought absolutely nothing of his request.
"I remember it being a dark room,” Natasha told interviewer and fellow Trump accuser, E. Jean Carroll, for The Atlantic. "But there are windows, so not too dark. We go in. I’m looking around, wondering what he wants to show me. I hear the door close. I turn around. And - he’s right at me, pushing me against the wall."
A shocked Natasha says she held her hands up immediately, creating space between herself and Trump as he lunged at her. But he managed to force his tongue down her throat as she tried to free herself from under his weight.
"Trump is much bigger - a looming figure - and he was fast, taking me by surprise and throwing me off balance. I was stunned. And I was grateful when Trump’s longtime butler burst into the room a minute later, as I tried to unpin myself," she wrote for People in 2016.
The butler informed them of Melania's impending return, and the three walked back out onto the patio to resume the interview.
Trump sat back down, and Natasha fumbled away with her recorder, trying to act normal.
It was then that she says he smiled and leant towards her, as they both waited for a heavily pregnant Melania to reappear.
"You know we’re going to have an affair, don’t you?" she remembers him saying. "Have you ever been to Peter Luger’s for steaks? I’ll take you. We’re going to have an affair, I’m telling you."
Melania walked in moments later and Trump immediately reverted into husband and dad mode, switching gears without so much of a flinch, as he told Natasha all about his wedded bliss.
An hour later, back at her hotel room, Natasha writes that her shock was quickly replaced by anger.
Why didn’t I slug him? Why couldn’t I say anything? she remembers thinking.
The following day, Natasha had a pre-arranged massage booked in at Mar-a-Lago's spa for her chronic neck pain.
She decided to keep the appointment, despite the previous day's incident, and when she turned up (accidentally 30 minutes late) she was informed that Trump had been waiting for her.
He left after hanging around at the spa for 15 minutes, her therapist told her.
Panicked that he'd return and enter the room while she was half-naked on the bed, Natasha says she cut the session short and left for the airport.
Back in Manhattan, Natasha requested to be taken off the Trump beat, and never interviewed him again. She didn't report the incident, because she was afraid of his power to "destroy" her.
Despite telling some friends and colleagues and family over the years, it would take 11 years for her to pluck up the courage to go public.
"There was something else lingering at the back of my mind: Trump was known for viciously attacking women’s looks when he didn’t like them or when he wanted to intimidate them. I’d already spent years feeling ashamed and degraded by his actions and words and I didn’t want to subject myself to any more humiliation, especially in front of the entire world," she wrote in Chicken Soup For The Soul.
Viciously attack is exactly what Trump did, implying that Natasha wasn't "attractive enough" to be worth his time in a public, cruel condemnation of her allegations.
"Take a look - you take a look, look at her, look at her words, you tell me what you think - I don’t think so," he told a rally in Palm Beach the day after her article went live. "I don’t think so."
In response to Trump, Natasha told People TV: "I don't take that as insulting in a personal way, but I do take that as an insult to other women, to all women, but especially to women who have been severely sexually assaulted. I think that he's saying there that only pretty women get assaulted," she said.
As more and more allegations against Trump from different women started to emerge, spurred on in part by his now infamous "grab 'em by the pussy" comment leaked in October 2016, Trump's go-to response became one of complete denial: He had never met these women.
People proved otherwise:
As many as 25 women have come forward since 2016 and accused Donald Trump of ogling, grabbing, groping, or raping them in the decades since the 1970s, with dozens upon dozens more instances detailed by women in All the President's Women: Donald Trump and the Making of a Predator, which was released last year.
These women are diplomats, ambassadors, yoga teachers, actresses and makeup artists, to name just a few. Their stories are set in changing rooms, airplanes, nightclubs, dinner tables, at a Mother's Day brunch, the US Open, a Ray Charles concert, and at Trump Tower.
Last year, Natasha wrote for The Washington Post, "On the eve of the 2016 election, I was among more than a dozen women who came forward about being forcibly grabbed, groped and kissed by Trump. We wanted to warn the country it was in danger of voting for a serial predator."
"We got hate mail, death threats. And what did he get? The keys to the office once held by Washington, Lincoln and the Roosevelts," she continued.
The #MeToo movement of 2017 took down some very powerful men, including Hollywood heavyweight Harvey Weinstein and R&B singer R.Kelly, who are both currently in prison for sexual assault crimes.
Right now, Trump appears to wield too much authority to pay for the allegations against him, as the 45th President of the United States of America.
One of his accusers, E. Jean Carroll, has filed a lawsuit against him, claiming he raped her in a dressing room during the 1990s.
In an extraordinary move earlier this month, the US Justice Department asked to take over the defence of the president, at the taxpayer's expense. The request and possible change of lawyers could further delay the lawsuit, or even kill it entirely.
But the women like Natasha and E. Jean who continue to speak out and cop death threats and abuse from Trump followers for doing so, are determined to keep making noise as the countdown to the November 3 election draws closer.
Today marks 50 days until America goes to the polls.
As Natasha wrote in her Washington Post op-ed, "Will this, finally, be the time when enough people care?"
Feature image: Andrew Francis Wallace/Toronto Star/Getty.
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