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      Eric Adams, Trump and a New York story that’s stress-testing the rule of law

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      In both real life and on film, New York City has often been a city linked with public scandals, corruption and high drama.But even Hollywood scriptwriters, so often keen on using the Big Apple as a backdrop, would have been hard-pushed to describe the astonishing events that have played out around the mayor, Eric Adams, in recent days.Last week, the US Department of Justice moved to drop criminal charges against Adams, in what many see as a blatant quid pro quo for getting Adams onboard as a political ally to a Donald Trump administration seemingly intent on launching a radical remaking of American government.It was a move that raised alarm among many residents of the city and legal experts about what many see as Trump – and Adams – undermining the integrity of the US judicial system and American democracy.Earlier this week, a top official at the justice department ordered the acting US attorney in the southern district of New York to stop prosecuting Adams for allegedly accepting bribes and illegal campaign contributions from foreign sources.The move was the latest stop in a dramatic term for America’s highest-profile mayor, which has seen the former cop elected as a Democrat but then drift rightwards, especially after Trump was elected and Adams faced prosecution. In heavily Democratic New York, Adams is now seen as an ally to Trump and has even reportedly flirted with the idea of becoming a Republican.Since being indicted in September, Adams has made regular overtures to Trump, including visiting him at his resort in Florida and skipping scheduled Martin Luther King Jr Day events in the city to attend Trump’s inauguration.Some observers said Adams was trying to obtain a pardon from Trump and ignoring his responsibilities as mayor. Adams claimed he has not discussed his legal case with Trump and that he had been talking with the president to help the city.Whatever Adams’s intentions were, Trump now appears to have helped him and, in doing so, added to the perception he will ignore the rule of law when it benefits him politically.“We have an administration that is willing to use its power to benefit favorite people, to the extent it’s able to do so without controversy – or even with controversy,” said Stephen Gillers, a legal ethics professor at New York University School of Law. “It’s a truly aggressive decision on the part of DoJ and an indefensible decision.”Adams was elected mayor in November 2021. Before the indictment, he already faced criticism because of the criminal histories of people in his inner circle, his frequent participation in the city’s nightlife and allegations that he did not actually live in the city, among other complaints from residents.“You would see him partying at clubs that my peers were at, and he seemed to fit there very well, more so than the office he was holding,” said Maedot Yidenk, a 27-year-old neuroscientist from Seattle who now lives in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn.After his indictment, Adams said the Biden administration had targeted him for prosecution because he had criticized its immigration policies. Prosecutors countered that the investigation had begun before Adams started attacking the federal government over its response to the number of immigrants entering the country.However, Trump agreed with Adams’s assessment and said he would consider pardoning the Democrat.But the justice department instead now wants to dismiss the charges. According to the acting deputy attorney general, Emil Bove, federal prosecutors behind the case “threatened the integrity of the proceedings, including by increasing prejudicial pretrial publicity” and “unduly restricted” the mayor’s ability to “devote full attention and resources to the illegal immigration and violent crime that has escalated under the policies of the prior Administration”.View image in fullscreenBove’s justification – that the prosecutor had been keeping Adams from doing his job – is “ridiculous”, according to Gillers.“It would immunize office holders, certainly mayors and governors, from criminal investigation and criminal charges, so long as they were named in that position,” Gillers said. “The real explanation, I think, is that Trump wanted to dismiss the indictment as a favor to Adams, for whatever reason, but to do it in the most neutral way.”Still, Bove has encountered resistance from prosecutors, which has plunged the city’s legal community into turmoil.On Thursday, the interim US attorney for the southern district, Danielle Sassoon, a Republican, resigned and accused the justice department of letting the defendant off in exchange for his help with Trump’s immigration policy. Five other officials in the justice department also resigned.“I remain baffled by the rushed and superficial process by which this decision was reached, in seeming collaboration with Adams’s counsel and without my direct input on the ultimate stated rationales for dismissal,” Sassoon wrote to the attorney general, Pam Bondi.Bove responded in a letter to Sassoon, stating that she had been “pursuing a politically motivated prosecution despite an express instruction to dismiss the case. You lost sight of the oath that you took when you started at the Department of Justice.”Trump said he had not asked prosecutors to drop the case. But in his letter, Bove wrote that Sassoon was “disobeying direct orders implementing the policy of a duly elected President”.But the scandal did not stop there. Adrienne Adams, the speaker of the New York city council, on Monday called on the mayor to resign. Her demand came just hours after four of Adams’s eight deputy mayors announced they would leave his administration – another crippling blow to his ever more disastrous reputation.Trump could have avoided the legal wrangling by just pardoning Adams, as some predicted he would.“If he does go that route, I think it raises the question why he wouldn’t have done it in the first place,” said Thomas Frampton, an associate law professor at the University of Virginia. “I think the answer is because he wanted to test to see how compliant the [southern district] would be.”Even in a liberal city like New York, there are people who both don’t like Trump – or his efforts to exert control over the justice department – and aren’t sure prosecutors should have filed charges against Adams.Stanley Brezenoff, who once chaired the city’s housing authority and board of correction, argued that the allegations that Adams pressured the fire department to open the Turkish consulate despite safety concerns were “not pretty, but I’m not sure that in and of itself warranted the extent of the criminal justice response”.“I can understand him trying to figure out ways to avoid the retribution,” said Brezenoff, who did not vote for Adams in the last election and has not decided who he will support in the Democratic primary in June: “I may not like that, but you wouldn’t say: ‘Impeach Adams’ because he’s currying favor with Washington, with Trump.”View image in fullscreenKelly Johnson, a mechanical engineer and marine veteran, used to encounter Adams, then a police officer, walking around Brooklyn and through mutual friends. Johnson said he felt that Adams “worked a lot with the community … I didn’t necessarily have anything really bad to say about him”.Johnson, who is Black, appreciates that Adams filled his administration with people of color and thinks that serving as only the city’s second Black mayor is especially difficult.“Everyone is going to make sure that if you’re not all the way clean, the slightest of things that you may do wrong – hell, you could buy a pack of cigarettes off of some government funding – you’ll get impeached,” said Johnson, 52, who lives in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood and would consider voting for Adams.There is a long list of candidates in the Democratic primary, and the former New York governor Andrew Cuomo is reportedly considering entering the race. Meanwhile, Adams has recently explored running in the Republican primary, the New York Times reported.In the 2021 election, Laurie Levinson, a retiree who lives in the East Village of Manhattan, voted for Maya Wiley, a former lawyer for Mayor Bill de Blasio who has not entered the new race.“There were people who were really, really qualified, like Maya Wiley,” said Levinson, who has not decided whom she will support this time. Like Trump, she said, “Adams is another moron … I can’t wait till the next mayoral races.”Patrick Canfield, a 31-year-old who works in publishing, sees Adams as corrupt and also dislikes his policies, such as increasing the police presence on the city’s subways.“I think we’re witnessing the crumbling of American institutions,” said Canfield, who also lives in Bedford-Stuyvesant. “Adams is just a microcosm of that.” More

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      Four deputies to New York mayor resign in fallout over dropped corruption charges

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      Four deputies to New York’s mayor, Eric Adams, resigned on Monday as the growing chaos following a justice department request to drop corruption charges against him, widely seen as a reward for his help with Donald Trump’s immigration agenda, engulfs his three-year-old administration.According to reports, four of Adams’ deputies – first deputy mayor Maria Torres Springer, deputy mayor for operations Meera Joshi, deputy mayor for health and human services Anne Williams-Isom, and deputy mayor for public safety Chauncey Parker – said they were stepping down.“I am disappointed to see them go, but given the current challenges, I understand their decision and wish them nothing but success in the future,” Adams said in a statement.Torres-Springer, Williams-Isom and Joshi issued a joint statement, citing “the extraordinary events of the last few weeks” and “oaths we swore to New Yorkers and our families” as what led them to the “difficult decision” to leave.Parker said the role was an “honor of a lifetime”.The deputies’ likely departure was first reported by WNBC and the New York Times on Monday, both citing sources within Adams’ administration.A justice department request to drop charges of conspiracy, wire fraud and soliciting illegal foreign campaign contributions against Adams last week led to a mutiny by prosecutors in New York who brought the case. At least seven prosecutors have resigned rather than comply with the request.According to WNBC, Adams held a Zoom call on Sunday with at least three of his deputies who expressed their intention to resign. The Democratic mayor is facing mounting calls for his own resignation, first over corruption charges filed last summer, and now over their resignations.Adams has pleaded not guilty, denied any wrongdoing and rejected calls for his resignation. He has also indicated he believes the charges were brought in retaliation for criticizing the Biden administration’s immigration policies, blaming them for the city’s struggles with absorbing tens of thousands of new arrivals.Adams has reportedly agreed to some cooperation with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) immigration agents, including allowing federal authorities to restart operations on Rikers Island, which holds the city’s largest jail.The mayor has also rejected accusations that dropping the federal charges against him would amount to making him a political prisoner of the Trump administration.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“No matter what they write, no matter all those who are tripping over themselves to state who I am and who I am going to be beholden to and how I am no longer independent, I know who I am,” Adams said on Sunday.Adams said that he is “going nowhere” despite protests calling for his removal by the governor of New York, Kathy Hochul.“And I want you to be clear, you’re going to hear so many rumors and so many things, you’re going to read so much,” Adams told a church congregation on Sunday. “I am going nowhere. Nowhere.” More

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      Under-pressure prosecutors ask to drop Eric Adams charges after seven resign

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      Under immense pressure from Donald Trump’s justice department leadership, prosecutors in Washington have asked a federal judge to dismiss the criminal corruption case against Eric Adams, the New York mayor, rather than see the entire public integrity office be fired.The prosecutors, Edward Sullivan and Antoinette Bacon, filed the request on Friday night to withdraw the charges against Adams that included bribery, fraud and soliciting illegal foreign campaign contributions.The move capped a week of turmoil at the department where seven prosecutors – including the acting US attorney in southern district of New York, the head of the criminal division and the head of the public integrity section – resigned in protest rather than dismiss the case for political reasons.And it followed an extraordinary showdown after the acting deputy attorney general Bove, facing opposition from prosecutors in New York and pushing to bring the justice department to heel, forced the public integrity section to find someone to put their name on the dismissal or be fired themselves.The roughly hour-long meeting, where the public integrity section weighed whether to resign en masse after agreeing that the dismissal of the Adams case was improper, culminated with Sullivan, a veteran career prosecutor, agreeing to take the fall for his colleagues, according to two people familiar with the matter.The decision gave the justice department what it needed to seek the end of the Adams case. The attorney general, Pam Bondi, said in an appearance on Fox News afterwards that the mayor’s case “is being dismissed today”, although that power rests with the presiding US district judge, Dale Ho, in New York.Ho has limited ability to deny the request but could still order an evidentiary hearing into why the department was ordering the end of the corruption case against Adams, which threatens to unearth deeper revelations into the fraught background behind a decision castigated by the lead prosecutor as a quid pro quo deal.The department’s rationale to dismiss the case was necessarily political: Bove had argued that it was impeding Adams from fully cooperating with Trump’s immigration crackdown – and was notably not making the decision based on the strength of the evidence or legal theory underpinning the case.The saga started on Monday. After Bove ordered the charges against Adams to be withdrawn, Danielle Sassoon, the acting US attorney for the southern district of New York, sent a remarkable letter to the attorney general that said Bove’s directive was “inconsistent with my ability and duty to prosecute federal crimes without fear or favor”.Sassoon also made a startling accusation in her letter, writing that the mayor’s lawyers had “repeatedly urged what amounted to a quid pro quo, indicating that Adams would be in a position to assist with the department’s enforcement priorities only if the indictment were dismissed”.A lawyer for Adams, Alex Spiro, denied the accusation, saying: “The idea that there was a quid pro quo is a total lie. We offered nothing and the department asked nothing of us. We were asked if the case had any bearing on national security and immigration enforcement and we truthfully answered it did.”On Friday, Adams himself said in a statement: “I never offered – nor did anyone offer on my behalf – any trade of my authority as your mayor for an end to my case. Never.”Sassoon, a conservative career prosecutor, also revealed in her letter that her team had intended in recent weeks to add a further obstruction of justice charge against Adams. For good measure, she castigated Bove for scolding a member of her team for taking notes at the meeting and ordering that the notes be confiscated.Apparently realizing that Sassoon would not agree to drop the case, two people familiar with the matter said, Bove attempted to end-run the situation by having the public integrity section at justice department headquarters in Washington take over the case and request its dismissal.The move prompted a wave of resignations from career prosecutors. On Thursday, Bove wrote back to Sassoon criticizing her for insubordination and placing her two lieutenants, Hagan Scotten and Derek Wikstrom, on administrative leave.Meanwhile, in Washington, Kevin Driscoll, the acting head of the criminal division which oversees public integrity, tendered his resignation with John Keller, the acting head of the integrity section itself, rather than go along with the dismissal.After Keller’s departure,Marco Palmieri became the third of four deputy chiefs of the public integrity section to resign, leaving the team without a clear leadership aside from three senior litigation counsels who served under the deputy chiefs.By Friday, Scotten resigned while on administrative leave. In a scathing rebuke of Bove, he wrote: “If no lawyer within earshot of the President is willing to give him that advice, then I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion. But it was never going to be me.” More

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      Victims of ‘kids-for-cash’ judge outraged by Biden pardon: ‘What about all of us?’

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      Victims of a former Pennsylvania judge convicted in the so-called kids-for-cash scandal are outraged by Joe Biden’s decision to grant him clemency.In 2011, Michael Conahan was sentenced to more than 17 years in prison after he and another judge, Mark Ciavarella, were found guilty of accepting $2.8m in illegal payments in exchange for sending more than 2,300 children – including some as young as eight years old – to private juvenile detention centers.Conahan was released from prison in 2020 due to Covid-19 and placed on house arrest, which had been scheduled to end in 2026.Conahan’s sentence was one of about 1,500 the US president commuted – or shortened – on Thursday while also pardoning 39 Americans who had been convicted of non-violent crimes.In response to Conahan’s pardon, the mother of a boy sent to jail at age 17 before later dying by suicide told the Citizens’ Voice: “I am shocked and I am hurt.”“Conahan’s actions destroyed families, including mine, and my son’s death is a tragic reminder of the consequences of his abuse of power,” Sandy Fonzo said to the outlet. “This pardon feels like an injustice for all of us who still suffer. Right now I am processing and doing the best I can to cope with the pain that this has brought back.”Similarly, Amanda Lorah, who at age 14 was wrongfully imprisoned as part of the scheme, told WBRE: “It’s a big slap in the face for us once again.“We had … time taken away from us. We had no one to talk to, but now we’re talking about the president of the United States to do this. What about all of us?”The Pennsylvania governor, Josh Shapiro, also condemned Biden’s decision, telling reporters that his fellow Democrat “got it absolutely wrong”, the Pennsylvania Capital-Star reported.“I’ll offer these thoughts as an outsider, not privy to all the information he looked at, but I do feel strongly that President Biden got it absolutely wrong and created a lot of pain here in north-eastern Pennsylvania,” Shapiro said.Biden’s actions Thursday marked the largest instance of presidential clemency carried out in a single day.Describing the move, the White House said: “The president is commuting the sentences of close to 1,500 individuals who were placed on home confinement during the Covid-19 pandemic and who have successfully reintegrated into their families and communities.”Attempts to contact Conahan were not immediately successful. More

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      Daniel Penny will be JD Vance’s guest at Army-Navy football game in Maryland

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      JD Vance, the vice-president-elect, confirmed that Daniel Penny, a Marine Corps veteran recently acquitted of homicide charges, will be his invited guest at the Army-Navy football game on Saturday in Maryland.Penny will watch the game from a suite alongside president-elect Donald Trump and other figures in Trump’s next administration, including his defence secretary nominee, Pete Hegseth.“I’m grateful he accepted my invitation and hope he’s able to have fun and appreciate how much his fellow citizens admire his courage,” Vance posted on X, confirming news first reported by the non-profit publication Notus.The invitation follows Penny’s acquittal on Monday by a New York jury, which found him not guilty of criminally negligent homicide in the 2023 death of Jordan Neely, a 30-year-old homeless man with a history of arrests, mental illness and medical conditions. Medical evidence revealed that Neely had sickle cell trait, an inherited genetic condition that under extreme physiological stress can potentially compromise blood oxygen transport, a factor Penny’s defence team argued could have contributed to his death.The case sparked nationwide controversy after Penny placed Neely in a chokehold on a New York City subway train in May 2023. Witnesses reported that Neely had been shouting and acting erratically, with one passenger, Juan Alberto Vazquez, telling NBC News at the time that Neely was making aggressive statements about not caring about potential consequences.It will be Penny’s first public appearance since his acquittal, and a high-profile event with deep ties to the military at that.Vance was vocal in his support of Penny, describing the prosecution as a “scandal” and praising the jury’s decision.“Daniel’s a good guy, and New York’s mob district attorney tried to ruin his life for having a backbone,” Vance posted on X.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionPenny, in a sit-down interview with Fox News this week, maintained that he feared for his own safety and that of other passengers during the incident, describing himself as being in a “vulnerable position”.“The guilt I would have felt if someone did get hurt, if he did do what he was threatening to do, I would never be able to live with myself,” Penny said. “I’d take a million court appearances and people calling me names and people hating me just to keep one of those people from getting hurt or killed.” More

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      White supremacist Nick Fuentes charged over Chicago pepper-spray incident

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      The notorious white supremacist Nick Fuentes is facing battery charges in Illinois because authorities say he pepper-sprayed a woman who had knocked on his front door after he enraged many on the internet by tweeting the misogynistic slogan “your body, my choice” following Donald Trump’s victory in the recent presidential election.Fuentes, 26, was arrested on 27 November on a count of misdemeanor battery and released the same day, according to documents filed on Wednesday in the Cook county circuit court that were reported on by the Chicago Sun-Times. He is tentatively scheduled to appear in court on 19 December.The far-right, avowedly antisemitic influencer seemingly sought to make light of his legal predicament on Friday on social media, publishing a post on X that contained a thinly disguised racial slur as well as the words “Free me”.Meanwhile, the Jewish feminist activist pressing the case against Fuentes, 57-year-old Marla Rose, also commented on social media, writing on Facebook: “It. Is. On.” She added “civil case pending” to the post that displayed three fire emojis.Fuentes invited the digital sphere’s fury by celebrating Trump’s return to the presidency at the expense of Kamala Harris on 6 November with a barb tweeted on X reading: “Your body, my choice. Forever.”The post taunting the concept of women’s bodily autonomy – along with the 2022 elimination of federal abortion rights at the hands of a US supreme court dominated by judges either appointed by or aligned with Trump – had gained more than 99.7m views as of Saturday. And some of Fuentes’s political opponents retaliated by publishing his home address on social media while declaring: “Your house, our choice.”Rose ultimately told police that she had gone to record the outside of Fuentes’s home in the Chicago-area suburb of Berwyn on 10 November. He soon allegedly pepper-sprayed her, pushed her on to the concrete and broke her cellphone.Video of the encounter that Rose later released showed Fuentes open his front door as she reached up to ring the doorbell. He extended his left arm while holding a bottle of pepper spray, which prompted Rose to say: “Oh my God, what are you doing?” The phone was then seen falling while Fuentes could be heard saying: “Get the fuck out of here.” Fuentes then seemingly used his foot to drag the phone inside his house before closing the door and locking it.A police report filed on 11 November said another woman driving by Fuentes’s house at the time called officers. That witness described seeing a man shove a woman outside a home, the report recounted.Rose was still at the scene when police arrived, and officers reportedly spoke with her as well as Fuentes separately.The report added that Fuentes claimed to police that he had received death threats as well as “people showing up to his house unannounced” after posting “a political joke online” had left him “in fear for his life”. He eventually “became uncooperative” and refused to further address the confrontation with Rose, as NBC News reported.Rose had “watery” eyes but listed no other visible physical injuries, the report said.Possible punishments for misdemeanor battery under Illinois law include relatively short jail sentences, probation and fines.Some of the earliest news media headlines given to Fuentes came when he withdrew from Boston University after participating in the 2017 white supremacist rally objecting to the removal of a statue of the Confederate general Robert E Lee in Charlottesville, Virginia. A demonstrator protesting the white supremacists was murdered by a neo-Nazi sympathizer who intentionally drove a car into her as well as others.Trump then ignited a scandal by hosting Fuentes as a dinner guest at his Mar-a-Lago resort in 2022 as he geared up to run for a second presidency. Another guest at that dinner was the rapper previously known as Kanye West, who had propagated antisemitic remarks that – among other consequences – cost him a business partnership with the sportswear company Adidas. More

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      House minority leader asks for ‘maximum protection’ after bomb threats target Democrats

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      American lawmakers are on edge after a wave of hoax bomb threats targeted figures across the political spectrum and prompted the Democratic leader in the House of Representatives to demand that Congress take action to provide “maximum protection”.Over Thanksgiving nearly the entire Connecticut congressional delegation of Democrats faced bomb threats that apparently were signed “Maga” – shorthand for Donald Trump’s “Make America great again” political movement.Those threats followed a spate of similar threats that targeted incoming Republican Trump administration appointees and their offices. Figures were also “swatted” by hoax calls to police with the apparent aim of triggering an armed police response to a target.“It is imperative that Congress provide maximum protection for all members and their families moving forward,” House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries said in a statement.Jeffries added: “America is a democracy. Threats of violence against elected officials are unacceptable, unconscionable and have no place in a civilized society. All perpetrators of political violence directed at any party must be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”According to Jeffries’ office, the incidents “ranged from detailed threats of a pipe bomb placed in mailboxes to swatting.” All were signed with “Maga” at the conclusion of the message, Jeffries’ statement said.The US Capitol police declined to offer details about the threats to news website Axios in order to “minimize the risk of copy-cats”.Meanwhile, the FBI is investigating the pre-Thanksgiving wave of threats against Trump’s incoming administration.Among those targeted were New York congresswoman Elise Stefanik, Trump’s pick to serve as the next ambassador to the United Nations; Oregon congresswoman Lori Chavez-DeRemer, whom Trump wants to lead the Department of Labor; and former New York congressman Lee Zeldin, who has been tapped to lead the Environmental Protection Agency.Bomb threats and swatting attempts also married the run-up to November’s presidential election with politicians, election officials and election offices being subject to the threats.The election played out against a background of warnings of civil unrest if the contest had been tight or disputed. However, Donald Trump’s clear victory over the vice-president, Kamala Harris, largely defused any prospect of protest or violence. More

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      A ‘gut punch’: Trump’s alleged sexual assault victims and their advocates on his win

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      When Donald Trump was elected to a second term last week, women who say he sexually assaulted them, and other victims of sexual abuse, voiced disappointment that a man repeatedly accused of sexual misconduct could once again become president, with one of them describing this win as a “gut punch”.More than two dozen women have made such claims against Trump, including E Jean Carroll, who was awarded nearly $90m total in two civil trials after jurors found that Trump sexually abused and defamed her. She said on X: “I tried to tell you.”Several survivors of sexual assault interviewed by the Guardian, as well as advocates for persons who have suffered abuse, said they were not surprised by Trump’s win. They felt it was another example of how sexual abuse is not taken seriously, or pointed to the fact that powerful people who perpetrate abuse seem to be able to avoid repercussions.Stacey Williams, who said she met Trump through Jeffrey Epstein about three decades ago, and told the Guardian that the now president-elect groped her at Trump Tower in 1993 in what seemed to be a “twisted game” with the late sex predator, is among the many processing election results.“I think what we were all hoping was that [the] truth would come through and the stories would affect people’s vote once they had [them] in front of them.”But, she said: “Disinformation won this election at the end of the day, and if we don’t figure out an answer for that, I don’t have a lot of hope for this country.”Emails to Trump’s camp did not receive an immediate response. Trump has previously denied all allegations of misconduct.Williams said that she was in Pennsylvania canvassing for five days. “Some of the women would say: ‘Will you please tell my husband your story?” she recalled.One woman even brought Williams into the house, so she could tell the woman’s brother her account. Williams did and “I saw him just kind of like, sink.” To her, the reaction suggested that he had not heard this account before.“I didn’t get the impression he even knew that Trump was an offender.“I had never wanted to tell my story, I knew it was going to be sort of a big media firestorm and blow up – that’s a lot to take on, let alone all the backlash and the misogyny,” she also said. “I was bracing myself for that, but it was worth it if I could get my message out there.“None of it mattered. All he had to do was say: ‘Eh, she’s lying,’” Williams said, prompting his followers to take the same tack. “Everyone’s like: ‘OK, let’s move on.’ That’s a lot to stomach.”Among the women who have come forward with allegations against Trump is Amy Dorris, a former model, who told the Guardian that he sexually assaulted her at the US Open tennis tournament in 1997. Dorris alleged that Trump forced his tongue down her throat, groped her body and kept her in a grip from which she could not escape, in an incident that made her feel “sick” and “violated”.Two other prominent accusers include Natasha Stoynoff and Jessica Leeds, who testified in court for Carroll’s civil proceedings against Trump. Stoynoff said that Trump assaulted her in a room at Mar-a-Lago about 20 years ago, when People magazine had sent her there to interview him about his first year of marriage to his third wife, Melania Trump.Leeds came forward in 2016 claiming that Trump grabbed her breasts and tried to put his hand up her skirt when they were seated next to each other on an airplane in the 1970s. At a campaign rally, Trump responded by saying: “Believe me, she would not be my first choice. That I can tell you,” and a campaign spokesperson said her allegation was “fiction”.Marissa Hoechstetter, who successfully pushed for New York’s watershed Adult Survivors Act, among other extensive advocacy, following her abuse at the hands of a now convicted obstetrician, said Trump’s win underscored that many people don’t see sexual violence as a problem.“It reaffirms that sexual violence is tolerated and it’s not disqualifying,” Hoechstetter said. “I don’t think it’s whether or not we proved that he did these things – I feel like it was [proved] – we’ve proved that people still don’t care.”“I’m not shocked by it; it’s a good reminder for us all that sexual violence is not an issue that people are willing to make big decisions on. There are other factors that are more important to them.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHoechstetter believes that Trump’s victory could have a “chilling effect down the line”. His win doesn’t take away survivors’ advocacy efforts, but “it negates all of the work that went into trying to hold him accountable in a court of law,” potentially deterring accusers from coming forward if they see that nothing will happen – especially given the immense personal toll that comes with speaking out.Erica Vladimer, co-founder of the Sexual Harassment Working Group, said she wasn’t surprised that Trump won despite his reported behavior towards women. (The Sexual Harassment Working Group is comprised of former New York city and state legislative staffers who have experienced harassment, abuse, and retaliation by officials, and seeks to change laws and policies to protect workers.)“I have never been under this illusion that the fact that Trump is a serial sexual harasser and a sexual abuser was top of mind for most voters – that it was a priority when it came to who they were going to vote for as president,” Vladimer said. “And yet, that does not make this gut punch any easier to stomach.”“Until our institutions, the people who hold that power, are willing to say this is not OK, I think we’re going to see men like Trump continue to amass power and enable this permission structure that has really been there for a long time,” Vladimer said.Trump’s second win prompted questions about why a president’s character does not appear to matter to voters – as well as about the character of those he surrounds himself with. The Florida Republican congressman Matt Gaetz, who has been investigated for alleged sexual misconduct and trafficking, is Trump’s attorney general pick. Gaetz denies any wrongdoing.Weeks before the 2016 election, a hot mic recording from the Access Hollywood television show emerged. In this recording, Trump boasted that he could sexually assault women due to his fame, saying: “Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything … Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.”Following Trump’s win, the phrase “your body, my choice” – which had circulated in far-right circles for several years – gained momentum on social media. The Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), a thinktank that studies extremism, identified “a 4,600% increase in mentions of the terms ‘your body, my choice’ and ‘get back in the kitchen’ on X”.Gloria Allred, who in her decades as an attorney has advocated for survivors, including five Trump accusers, said: “a theme of the former president’s recent campaign appeared to be male chauvinism” and referred to the American Psychological Association guidance that recognizes “traditional masculinity is psychologically harmful” to men and boys.But, “I believe that women and girls will also suffer from this version of toxic masculinity, and they are endangered by it. Evidence of this is now seen online where some young men seem comfortable saying ‘your body, my choice’, which could be the mantra of rapists, sexual harassers and child molesters,” Allred said in a statement.“I wonder how these young men would feel if other men decided that they had a right to rape, beat or abuse the bodies of the young men’s mothers, sisters, aunts or grandmothers,” Allred’s statement continued. “My guess is that when these young men get older and have daughters they will regret their words.”Mariann Wang, an attorney whose practice focuses on survivors who has also represented Trump accusers, said his win was “devastating”.“It is an expression, yet again, that millions of people do not prioritize the safety of their mothers, their sisters, their daughters or their friends,” she said in a statement.“That said, I’ve also seen the enormous courage and power of so many women willing to keep fighting for their rights and for equality all these years,” Wang said. “And as devastating as this is, I know all those women and men who support them will keep fighting.” More