Trump prosecutor Jessica Leeds considers lawsuit and calls him “Predator”

“He attacked me 50 years ago and he's still attacking me today,” she told a group of reporters gathered on Fifth Avenue, calling Trump's “chosen one” comments “really bizarre.”

“I have to admit, I laughed,” she said when she heard the comment. “It's a little creepy and a little hard to process. He seems to be possessed in some way. But here I am.”

Leeds accuses Trump of groping her while sitting next to her in the first-class cabin during a flight in 1979.

She first made her accusation publicly in 2016 during the presidential campaign, when she told the New York Times that Trump had groped her as they sat next to each other in the first-class cabin of a flight to New York.

Leeds told her story most fully on the witness stand in Manhattan federal court in the spring of 2023 as part of the sexual abuse and defamation trial brought by writer E. Jean Carroll.

“He touched my breasts,” she testified at Carroll's trial. “It was like he had 40 million hands, and it was a battle between the two of us.”

Leeds, then a businesswoman, saw Trump again about two years later at a charity event, she testified.

“He said, 'I remember you. You're that cunt from the plane,'” Leeds told the jury in Carroll. “So, it was like a bucket of cold water had been thrown over my head.”

On Friday, Trump's lawyers argued that Leeds' testimony should never have been admitted because of the special jurisdiction surrounding airplanes. (The three-judge panel was skeptical.)

Shortly after the meeting, Trump summoned reporters to Trump Tower, where he denigrated Carroll and a third accuser and trial witness, Natasha Stoynoff, in a press conference following oral arguments in the appeal against Carroll Leeds.

Leeds gave reporters a brief but no less powerful version of her story on Monday, saying she was doing so “because I believe it is important to remind voters.”

“Suddenly this man started grabbing me and kissing me,” she said of the flight. “He had 47 arms like an octopus.”

“When he decided to put his hand under my skirt, it gave me enough energy to get away from him,” she added.

At Monday's press conference, Leeds said she first went public with her allegations after Trump denied sexually harassing women during a presidential debate and wanted to set the record straight. She urged people not to vote for Trump in the 2024 election.

“We simply cannot allow this person to return to the White House,” she said Monday.

Carroll's defamation and sexual abuse jury found Trump guilty of sexually abusing and defaming Carroll in 2023 and awarded her $5 million in damages. A second jury in January of this year ordered Trump to pay Carroll an additional $83 million for additional defamation claims.

The sexual assault lawsuit against Trump included only Carroll's allegations, but the testimony of Leeds and Stoynoff – as well as the infamous Access Hollywood video in which Trump brags about grabbing women's genitals – was admitted as evidence to establish a pattern of Trump's behavior.

Carroll's lawsuit alleges that Trump cornered and sexually assaulted her in the dressing room of Bergdorf Goodman, a luxury department store not far from Trump Tower, in the mid-1990s.

She filed her sexual abuse lawsuit under the Adult Survivor's Act, a New York state law that provides temporary relief for civil claims that would otherwise be time-barred.

Carroll also filed a defamation suit against Trump after he called her a liar, denied her allegations, and insulted her looks by calling her “not my type.”

The plane incident Leeds described did not occur in New York but decades ago, making it difficult for her to file a sexual abuse lawsuit.

But Trump's refutation of her testimony on Friday may have opened up new opportunities for a defamation lawsuit.

“Based on his recent comments, I am considering a number of options,” she told reporters on Monday. “But no decision has been made yet.”