The New York Times and Washington Post have morphed into the personal Facebook pages of random women making unsubstantiated allegations against Donald Trump. So maybe they should at least finally quote a female masseuse’s statements to police about Al Gore allegedly sexually assaulting her in a Portland Hotel.
In 2010, the Portland Police announced they were opening up an investigation into Molly Haggerty’s charges about the alleged 2006 incident. Even though an official transcript of her interview the previous year with Portland Police Detective Molly Baul was quickly posted by TheSmokingGun.com, the New York Times only reported in vague term that Gore was being accused of unwanted sexual advances. WaPo investigative reporter Carol Leonnig reported that the woman told police that she “was repeatedly subjected to unwanted sexual touching.”
That made it sound like Gore just tried to cop a feel once or twice on the way out of his doors. Actually, the details, if true, are harrowing and actually go beyond even what women are alleging about Trump.
Haggerty said her clue phone started ringing when she got to Gore’s two-room hotel suite on October 23, 2006, and he asked for the massage in the bedroom, not the main room on the massage table she apparently brought.
When Gore, in town for a climate change speech, finally agreed to go on the table he started “demanding sexual favors.”
Just like Bill Clinton in a hotel room with Juanita Broaddrick, it seems, Gore did not take no for an answer very well, if her account is correct.
“He grabbed my right hand hard, shoved it down the sheet to his pubic hair area, my finger brushing against his penis, and firmly planted on his pubic area, my fingers brushed against his penis and firmly planted my hand on his pubic crest area and said to me, ‘There!’ in a very angry sounding voice.”
She moved her hand away and quickly ended the massage and tried to leave. But Gore persisted, pointing to a hotel “treat box” that he said contained condoms, the woman claimed.
“I was intimidated by him physically because he is a very large man, about the same height as me, maybe a little taller but a lot heavier than I was and clearly much stronger and he had a dramatic display of violent temper as well as extremely dictatorial commanding attitude besides his Mr. Smiley Global Warming concern persona.”
She tried to leave but he, uh, cock blocked her.
“I did not know what to do and I grasped for something to say to distract him away from the incendiary point. I was still unable to get out the door as he was between it and me plus I had my stuff yet to finish dealing with.”
“Again, he approached me and he grasped me and gave me a big tongue kiss. At this point, I was even more afraid of him physically and I tried again hard to squirm away. He grabbed at my right camisole bra strap under and through the arm hole in my sleeveless sweater and roughly tried to pull it down off me in an attempt to disrobe me, saying what’s this. I broke away from him and firmly with even more distress again said loudly, Stop it.”
Gore “forcefully, loudly insisted and demanded that I accompany him to his bedroom where where the iPod docking was” so he could play her a song by Pink on his iPod.
She “reluctantly” went into the bedroom and stood as far away from Gore as possible while he sat on the bed playing the Pink song “Dear Mr. President.”
“As soon as he had it playing he turned to me and immediately flipped me free on his back and threw his whole body face down over atop me, pinning me down and outweighing me by quite a bit. Get off me, you big lummox! I loudly yelled.”
But Gore “just giggled and acted like I was only teasing him and I had to physically struggle and wrench around to throw him off my body so I could stop being squashed and breathe again.”
It’s not clear how the woman finally got out of the room because the official interview transcript posted by TheSmokingGun.com jumps from Page 17 with her quoted (immediately above) to Page 20 where Haggerty is discussing the aftermath.
The woman said she did not immediately go to the police out of fear her work reputation would destroyed.
Although, unlike Trump’s accusers, she eventually went to them first, not reporters.
Shortly after the investigation was announced the Portland DA announced, without any coherent explanation, that Gore would not be prosecuted.
In his own interview with the fuzz Gore categorically denied the woman’s allegations.
Somebody is clearly not telling the truth.
But maybe the New York Times and Washington Post should report the story properly so readers can decide for themselves. Even if unlike the stuff they are circulating about Trump that won’t help Hillary win the election.
Ditto for the network news and their viewers.
The story apparently went entirely unreported by NBC News.
ABC News referred vaguely to charges against Gore about “unwanted sexuaul advances.”
CBS News did mention Haggerty’s claim Gore pushed her hand on his Johnson but omitted the other details.
WaPo reporter Carol Leonning, who was quite chatty recently when the Washington Gadfly called to schmooze about her acclaimed reporting on the Secret Service, did not reply to repeated requests for comment.
Interestingly, nothing online indicates a single journalist has ever attempted to even ask Gore about the matter directly–compare that to how questioning Trump about allegations from random women, who have not filed police reports, is the media’s top priority these days.
