Trump wanted accusers to confront Bill Clinton: report

by Rebecca Savransky - 10/10/16 8:48 AM ET

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump reportedly wanted to seat women who have accused Bill Clinton of sexual abuse in his family’s box during Sunday night’s presidential debate between Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton.

{mosads}But the Commission on Presidential Debates said if Trump did seat the women in his box, security officers would remove them, The Washington Post reported.

The Trump campaign’s chief executive, Stephen Bannon, and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, reportedly came up with the plan to seat the four women — three of whom accused the former president of sexual assault or harassment years ago — in Trump’s family’s box.

The women — Paula Jones, Juanita Broaddrick, Kathleen Willey and Kathy Shelton — were supposed to walk into the debate hall at the same time as Bill Clinton and confront him.

“We were going to put the four women in the VIP box,” said former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a Trump surrogate. “We had it all set. We wanted to have them shake hands with Bill, to see if Bill would shake hands with them.”

Giuliani said the debate commission’s co-chairman, Frank Fahrenkopf, rejected the plan.

“Fahrenkopf said no — verbally said no, that security would throw them out,” Giuliani said.

The women sat in the audience, but not in the GOP nominee’s family box.

Giuliani said Bannon was in support of having the women come out until just before the debate.

“But we pulled it because we were going to have a big incident on national TV,” Giuliani said. “Frank Fahrenkopf stopped us, and we weren’t going to have a fight on national TV with the commission to start the debate.”

In an interview following the debate, Giuliani criticized Fahrenkopf and cited the controversy during the first presidential debate surrounding billionaire Mark Cuban’s invitation to the event.

“In the first debate with Mark Cuban, Fahrenkopf said we’ll make a deal and everybody will [be able] to approve who’s in the shot and if it’s not family, they have a right to object and we have a right to object,” Giuliani said. “So we object. But 10 minutes before that debate he tells us he can’t do anything about Cuban sitting in the first row, that security can’t throw him out.”

“The women were outraged,” Giuliani said. “They were in the holding room and ready to go. No one was pushing them. They volunteered. But I knew the minute we got pushback that we had gotten into their heads. [Clinton] was rattled. They were rattled.”

Tags Bill Clinton Donald Trump Hillary Clinton