Samantha Cohen, the daughter of President Donald Trump’s former lawyer, says she was taken aback by his behavior toward her father during a 2012 incident in which her father says Trump leered at her.
Michael Cohen, who spent time in prison earlier this year for fraud and tax evasion, lying to Congress and campaign finance violations, detailed the allegation in his recently released book, according to Vanity Fair, writing that in 2012, he and Trump were chatting at Trump’s property in Bedminster, New Jersey, when Trump noticed Samantha Cohen approaching them, unaware that she was his lawyer’s daughter.
“Trump’s attention was diverted to another skirt walking off a tennis court. ‘Look at that piece of a–,’ Cohen recalls Trump saying, as he whistled and pointed,” according to Vanity Fair. “‘I would love some of that.’ It so happened that Trump was referring to Cohen’s then 15-year-old daughter, Samantha.”
“Cohen informed Trump of his mistake. ‘That’s your daughter?’ Trump responded. ‘When did she get so hot?’ When Samantha reached her dad, Trump asked her for a kiss on the cheek, before inquiring, ‘When did you get such a beautiful figure?’ and warning her that in a few years, he would be dating one of her friends,” the magazine reported.
Asked about the alleged incident by CNN’s Alisyn Camerota on “New Day” on Monday, Samantha Cohen said it’s “a little bit less clear to me” because she’s become “desensitized to men making these kinds of comments,” adding that she remembered “insulting” comments Trump made toward her father during the episode.
“The story is a little bit less clear to me, I’m sure many women can relate – you become desensitized to men making these kinds of comments to you, and you allow them to go over your head and you kind of tune out the noise,” she said. “But what stood out to me in that moment was he said to my dad, ‘Well, there is no way that she got her looks from you. Thank God you married a beautiful woman.’”
She continued: “And I was desensitized to men making creepy comments about me, but I was not desensitized to someone blatantly insulting and degrading my father in front of me, someone who I looked up to and loved very much, and that was very upsetting to me.”
Samantha Cohen said the experience changed her impression of Trump and made her think that “maybe Trump doesn’t treat my father so well.”
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany dismissed Cohen’s claims Monday morning.
“Michael Cohen is a disgraced felon and disbarred lawyer, who lied to Congress. He has lost all credibility, and it’s unsurprising to see his latest attempt to profit off of lies,” she said.
Asked by Camerota if she ever got the impression that Trump was hitting on her, Samantha Cohen said she did not, but that she believed he was “interested in younger women.”
“I didn’t get the impression that he was hitting on me directly, but I had the impression that he was interested in younger women, and that, you know, women would age out for him, and that when one woman became too old, he’d find a new younger one,” she said.
Trump has been accused of sexual misconduct by a number of women in recent years, allegations that span from groping on planes to unwanted advances in Trump Tower to sexual assault in a department store. Trump has strongly denied all of those allegations.
This story has been updated to include reaction from the White House.
CNN’s Max Blau and Maegan Vazquez contributed to this report.
