A woman who accused President Donald Trump of sexual misconduct is now running for political office.
Thirty-five-year-old Democrat Rachel Crooks, who accused then-candidate Trump of sexual misconduct just before the 2016 presidential election, has announced her run for the Ohio state legislature.
“Crooks, the director of international student recruitment at Heidelberg University in Ohio, is running to represent the state’s 88th district and would have to unseat two-term GOP incumbent Bill Reineke,” reports The Hill. The Democrat Party is reportedly backing the 35-year-old.
Crooks claims Trump acted inappropriately with her in an elevator at Trump Tower in 2005, when she was working there as a receptionist. The accuser said Trump kissed her on the cheeks and lips after she thanked him for inviting her to a Christmas party that she could not attend. He also told her she should be a model, she claims. Here’s the account, via Vanity Fair:
They shook hands, and then he gave her a double-cheek kiss, which is something she’d come to expect from important New York men and thought of as totally normal. Not so normal was the way that Trump kept kissing her on each cheek over and over, in between saying things like, “Where are you from? You should be a model. Do you know I have my own agency?,” and then kissing her on the lips. Then he went up the elevator.
Trump has denied the accusations.
Crooks told Cosmopolitan magazine that she became inspired to run for office partly because of the #MeToo movement. She was encouraged to take political action at the behest of “several women in her liberal resistance group,” notes The Hill.
“I think like a lot of women, because we’ve been historically underrepresented in politics, I didn’t necessarily see myself in this role,” said Crooks. “But multiple people encouraged and said, ‘I think you would be great.’ … Once I sat down and mulled it over, I felt like it really was a duty that I had, that I should take on this responsibility firsthand and try to make a difference for other people.”
In December, Crooks told Vanity Fair that her goal is have Trump removed from office.