One of the women whose allegations of sexual misconduct against then-candidate Donald Trump rocked the 2016 presidential campaign is facing her own controversy after a series of emails revealed she initially hoped to be a part of the billionaire businessman’s White House bid.
As The Hill reported this week, Jill Harth, a New York cosmetics executive, pitched herself as a potential Trump makeup artist in an Oct. 1, 2015, email to Trump.
In introducing herself, she wrote that she was “definitely on Team Trump as so many others are,” going on to tout her skills as a cosmetician.
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“I can’t watch television without seeing you or hearing your name everywhere!” she wrote. “It’s a good thing for sure but PLEASE let me do your makeup for a television interview, a debate, a photo session, anything!”
She claimed the ability to even his skin tone and generally give him a more telegenic appearance.
“It kills me to see you looking too orange and with white circles under the eyes,” Harth wrote. “I will get your skin looking smoother and even toned.”
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In a subsequent correspondence, she offered herself as a surrogate willing to publicly praise Trump on the campaign trail. Specifically, she said she would discuss “all positive things about how he is with women.”
Nearly two decades earlier, however, Harth apparently thought differently of Trump’s behavior around women. Those views resurfaced months after she sent the fawning emails as she publicly accused him of sexual harassment.
The charges were first included in a lawsuit she filed in 1997 and later withdrew.
She claimed Trump groped her and attempted to reach under her dress during an encounter several years earlier at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
In a statement this week to The Hill, Harth addressed the apparent inconsistency, acknowledging a financial motive to her fleeting flirtation with Trump’s campaign.
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“The Hill has insisted I explain how I could accuse Donald Trump of sexual assault, sexual harassment and attempted rape in a 1997 federal lawsuit, then send him an email volunteering to do his makeup during the 2016 election campaign,” she wrote. “Well, a couple years of therapy helped me deal with Trump’s sexual attacks and the mind games he had played on me for more than a year and move on with my life.”
As for the motivation behind her 2015 olive branch, Harth claimed she was angling to sign Trump on as a celebrity pitchman for “Made Man,” her new line of male cosmetics.
“In 2015 I was very excited about a new men’s cosmetic product line that I had developed and needed a prominent spokesperson,” she wrote. “And after discussions with my business associate she thought Donald Trump would be ideal. I called Trump’s executive assistant who asked me to put everything in writing by email with a formal proposal for Trump.”
A total of 19 women have publicly accused Trump of sexual misconduct, leading critics including Harth and several Democratic lawmakers to call for his resignation.
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During the campaign, Trump repeatedly dismissed his accusers as liars.
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