They got back together a few months later, but Trump apparently hadn't abandoned those old habits. In the period before he proposed to Melania, Trump engaged in a wave of allegedly unwanted touching. One of those incidents happened during a Mar-a-Lago New Year's Eve party in the early 2000s. Karen Johnson spoke publicly about the events of that night for the first time in an interview with us.
Johnson said she was at Trump's Palm Beach estate that night with her husband, who was suffering from multiple sclerosis, and another relative. The family visited the seaside club regularly; Johnson and her husband had even held their wedding reception there a few years earlier. Trump, whom she didn't know before her wedding, had "chased some of my bridesmaids around," said Johnson, but he had been "nice" to her.
At the New Year's Eve party, Johnson, wearing a black Versace dress, danced with her friends. Shortly after glittering balloons fell from the ceiling at the stroke of midnight, her husband said he wasn't feeling well and the relative was ready to go. Johnson decided to make a quick trip to the restroom before they headed home. "I hadn't seen [Trump] that whole entire night," said Johnson, who was in her late thirties at the time. "I was just walking to the bathroom. I was grabbed and pulled behind a tapestry, and it was him. And I'm a tall girl and I had six-inch heels on, and I still remember looking up at him. And he's strong, and he just kissed me," she recounted to us. "I was so scared because of who he was... I don't even know where it came from. I didn't have a say in the matter."
Johnson said Trump then grabbed her hand and said, "You have to help me greet these guests out," explaining that Melania was upstairs. "So I stood next to him while he greeted some guests out the door," Johnson said. She didn't let on that anything was amiss because she didn't want to create an awkward situation. "I was afraid to say what had happened," she said. "I didn't even know how it happened."
Documentation and photographs corroborate Johnson's general description of the evening. A friend also said Johnson told him about the encounter years before Trump ran for office.
Edit: I just saw there is a thread on this already
