A staff member of Donald Trump’s 2016 Presidential campaign filed a lawsuit in federal court in Florida on Monday, alleging that she experienced “racial and gender discrimination” while working for the campaign, that she was paid less than male and white colleagues, and that Trump once kissed her partially on the mouth, without her consent. The claim related to the kiss may prove difficult to verify. Four people said that the campaign worker, Alva Johnson, told them about the incident afterward, but two other people, who Johnson said were present at the time of the kiss, told me that they did not see it. In a statement, Sarah Sanders, the White House press secretary, denied that it had taken place.
The most legally significant aspect of Johnson’s suit may ultimately be something the complaint does not explicitly address: the pervasive use of nondisclosure agreements by Trump during his campaign and in his Administration. Johnson’s suit is at least the sixth legal case in which Trump campaign or Administration employees have defied their nondisclosure agreements. Three of those actions, including Johnson’s, were filed this month. Johnson, who was the campaign’s administrative field-operations director in Florida, signed a nondisclosure agreement that bars her from revealing any information “in any way detrimental to the Company, Mr. Trump, any Family Member, any Trump Company or any Family Member company.” Johnson’s attorney, Hassan Zavareei, said, “We expect that Trump will try to use the unconscionable N.D.A. and forced arbitration agreement to silence Ms. Johnson. We will fight this strong-arm tactic.”
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The incident in which Johnson said that Trump kissed her occurred during an event that she had helped organize in Tampa in August, 2016, according to the complaint. In an R.V. before Trump’s speech at the event, the complaint alleges, Trump took Johnson by the hand and leaned in to kiss her; she attempted to turn away, but, she claims, his mouth made contact with the corner of hers.
In her statement, Sarah Sanders said, “This accusation is absurd on its face. This never happened and is directly contradicted by multiple highly credible eyewitness accounts.” The two people who disputed Johnson’s account, Karen Giorno, a staffer, and Pam Bondi, a campaign surrogate, said that they had been close enough that they would likely have witnessed the incident. “I don’t even recall Alva being on the R.V.,” Giorno told me. (Photographs from the rally place Johnson inside the R.V.) Bondi, who said that she travelled with Trump extensively and never witnessed inappropriate behavior, added, “Had it happened, I feel I would have seen it, because I was there the entire time.”
Three of Johnson’s family members—her partner, her mother, and her stepfather—said that she told them about the incident immediately afterward, and recalled that she was in tears. Johnson said that at first she continued to go to work. In October, 2016, the Washington Post released audio of Trump saying, “I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait.” At that point, Johnson said, she saw the incident with Trump as part of a pattern. She said that she took several sick days and consulted an attorney, whom she told in a text message that Trump had kissed her. She also spoke with a therapist, whose notes state that “she was having nightmares because of what happened.” The attorney, Adam Horowitz, advised Johnson to notify the campaign that she was resigning. Shortly afterward, the campaign sent Johnson a termination letter.
After Trump’s election, Johnson said, she wanted to “leave the incident in the past,” and she attended an inaugural ball and applied for a job in the Administration. She said she feared that the President or his supporters would attack her character if she filed a public complaint. (Johnson was arrested for marijuana possession in 2000, and in 2006 her sister and her father filed a motion for a protection order against her in family court in Georgia, after what her attorney said were heated arguments.)
Johnson’s lawsuit is at least the fourth filed against Trump by women with complaints of unwanted physical advances. None of the previous suits have resulted in judgments against Trump, but settlement negotiations are ongoing in at least one. At least nine additional women have publicly claimed that Trump kissed them without their consent, but none of them have pursued legal action.
