Trump faces new wave of sexual harassment allegations

Two women have come forward and accused Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump of sexual transgressions and inappropriate behaviour.

Trump’s spokesman has called the story published on Wednesday by the New York Times as "fiction”. The report was followed by a stream of similar allegations from other women, putting more pressure on the Trump campaign as it struggles to contain a crisis caused by the candidate's comments about groping women without their consent which surfaced on Friday.

One of the women, Jessica Leeds, appeared on camera on the New York Times' website to recount how Trump grabbed her breasts and tried to put his hand up her skirt on a flight to New York in or around 1980.

The second woman, Rachel Crooks, described how Trump "kissed me directly on the mouth" in 2005 outside the elevator in Trump Tower in Manhattan, where she was a receptionist at a real estate firm.

By late Wednesday evening the list of new allegations against Trump included two Miss USA contestants who claimed Trump deliberately walked in on them when they were naked in a dressing room, two women who allege Trump groped or kissed them without consent, a claim by a woman that she was groped at a Trump event at his Mar-A-Lago estate in Florida, a People magazine reporter who says Trump forced himself on her shortly before she was due to interview him and his wife in 2005, and an incident in which Trump appears to sexualise a 10-year-old girl.

Trump's campaign denied there was any truth to the New York Times accounts. Marc Kasowitz, a lawyer representing Trump, reportedly demanded that the newspaper retract the story, calling it "libelous," and threatening legal action if it did not comply.

"This entire article is fiction, and for the New York Times to launch a completely false, co-ordinated character assassination against Trump on a topic like this is dangerous," the Trump campaign's senior communications adviser Jason Miller said in a statement.