Breitbart News Sunday featured an interview with Anthony Gilberthorpe, the British man who says he was a passenger on the flight upon which Jessica Leeds claims Donald Trump groped her 35 years ago. Gilberthorpe disputed Leeds’ claims.
“It really depends, I think, on the hour of the day, and the day of the week, as to what this woman is saying,” Gilberthorpe said of Leeds. “I mean, let’s get it right. She has waited – she said initially 30 years; that was then moved to 35 years. I’ve got news for her tonight: it was, in fact, 36 years. I’m not guessing. I’m pretty sure. So let me put that down as a marker first.”
“She has made these wild allegations about Trump,” he continued. “Now, Trump is old enough, bold enough to look after himself. But you know, sometimes you’ve got to step up to the plate. In fact, always, you have. I really want to stress to you tonight, and to everyone listening, that whether it was Clinton, whether it was Obama, whether it was Donald Trump – if I knew that what was being said about any one of them was a lie, then I would step up to the plate.”
“I know what is being said about me on Twitter, and I am so convinced of my cause that I’m prepared to say, ‘Who cares?’ I’m here, I’ve got a message, and I want to be heard. And it’s not just a message of opinions or thoughts; it’s fact. And that’s what I’m prepared – and that is why I’ve literally come here to New York to say my peace,” he declared.
Gilberthorpe agreed with Marlow that one suspicious detail of Leeds’ story is that she claims to have been groped for fully 15 minutes.
“I think any objective observer is going to say, ‘Hey, hold on. Let’s rewind,’” Gilberthorpe said. “First interview, no mention whatsoever of anyone. I mean me, I would want to get it out straight away, my message: ‘Hey, you know, it’s not just me saying it; other people or another person saw it.’ But no mention whatsoever.”
He said that in later accounts, Leeds began suggesting there was a witness on the flight who could back up her allegations and was eventually “convinced there was a man to her right.”
“I really, really, really do appreciate her confirming the position of myself there because it’s helped an awful lot. It’s helped me, it’s certainly helped Trump, but it hasn’t helped her one bit. That’s a second marker, if I may put down to you,” Gilberthorpe said.
“Let’s just get the scene, okay? We’re all in First Class. I think that’s pretty much agreed. I know the configuration of the seats. She’s helped me by confirming it. Now, for those 15 minutes of this serious sexual assault – because it wasn’t just groping; it was a very, very serious sexual assault – she sat there, okay? Now, ladies, ladies listening: you’re on an aircraft. Very few places can be so public or so confined. There happens to be, remember in First Class, no sight nor sound of any stewardess whatsoever. Look, I’ve traveled in First Class quite a bit, and I think any Coach class, Business, or First Class, you do not not see a stewardess for 15 minutes. I mean, frankly, the stewardess, she should be sacked because she’s not doing her job,” he said sarcastically.
“Really, the more one analyzes, the nonsense it is,” he continued. “She introduces me then, and says that I just sat there. Now guys who are listening, please tell me this. Place yourselves in that seat, the seat that she says in the adjacent aisle. You sit there, and you’re watching a man that you had only met three hours previous, that I had met three hours previous, and I am just looking. I am watching a man sexually assault a woman, but the guy – me – just sits there.”
Gilberthorpe said this claim was “more than insulting because it’s making me complicit in that assault, and that’s pretty serious stuff.” He also complained that media organizations made no effort to contact him and get his side of the story after Leeds began alluding to his presence as a witness.
Resuming his own account of the flight, he said he spoke with Trump for a while before takeoff, “and then, as a matter of fact, Jessica entered through the front entrance of the aircraft. She was shown to her seat. Her jacket was taken and was stored in the wardrobe, which was to the left. She sat down, and she introduced herself, and this Trump and I – I only knew this guy ‘Donald’ as he introduced himself three hours previous to me; I didn’t know it was Donald Trump.”
“It was back in the days. I’d only visited America one time previous to that. I’m not familiar, as I’m sure with respect to a lot of American listeners tonight wouldn’t be familiar with a lot of our British businessmen,” he explained. “But he was nice. We were talking, we were laughing, he was reading, I was reading, et cetera. She came on, and she hogged the limelight. She wanted to talk to him in a most animated, exaggerated way. About 45 minutes after she had taken her seat and we had taken off, he went to use the toilet.”
Gilberthorpe said that during Trump’s absence, Leeds told him who his fellow passenger was, excitedly explaining that he was “one of the richest men in the world.”
“And her quote, not mine: ‘Oh, I can’t believe that I’m sitting next to him. I can’t believe it! This is the man I want to marry!’ Okay, it was all said in jest and joke, but she was so excited about having the chance, the opportunity, of sitting next to this man. I attempted to talk over to Trump, but she wasn’t really having much of it. I was talking to her, to him, for the remaining two-and-a-half hours of the journey. We landed in New York. Having landed, he politely said, ‘Goodbye,’ shook my hand, and shook hers. He didn’t kiss her, didn’t kiss her. And she and I left the plane together. She and I exchanged kisses. I went for my luggage. She did not go for her luggage. That’s another marker I’m putting down tonight,” he said.
Gilberthorpe said he was “absolutely flabbergasted” by the media reaction to Leeds’ accusations against Trump.
“I first came across the news story on Thursday, just this Thursday gone,” he recalled. “I was with friends, and I was looking at the Internet, as I regularly do, and I recognized her, and, of course, by now, I recognized him. I took a bit of a double look, a double take, and I thought, ‘Oh, he and her must have been in a relationship and fallen out. She’s accusing him of sexual wrongdoing.’”
“Then, in reading further, and looking further into the story on other sites that then were carrying it, I couldn’t believe – to actually know, for a fact, that she was, in fact, talking about that one time that she says she did meet him, which was the one occasion when I met her and him together, so I then became most aware myself that it was, in fact, that occasion, that particular flight. And I couldn’t believe – so I’ll tell you what I did: I found the details of Trump’s lawyer, and I tell you why, in one way I wanted, and in another way I did not want to involve myself.”
“This is another marker,” he declared. “I’m sorry to keep saying, but I want to put these markers down because I don’t want anyone to contradict me afterwards, and if they do, I’ll be able to refer to these markers that I’m putting down tonight.”
“So when I read more of the first story – when, as I say, she made no reference at all to seat configurations, to the particular flight, to when it was, where it was, et cetera and so on. She just said that she was on the flight, and this man – in fact, with respect, it was more than grope, it was sexually assaulted her,” he repeated, also reiterating that if he had witnessed such a crime without intervening, he would be complicit in what British law considers a felony offense.
“It’s certainly immoral, to say the least, and it’s something I could not, and would not, and did not do,” Gilberthorpe stated.
As some other observers have done, Gilberthorpe disputed the part of Leeds’ account where she claims the armrest between her seat and Trump’s was raised to facilitate his sexual assault, noting there were actually separate armrests for each seat in the First Class cabin. He also said Leeds began dropping the raised-armrest detail from later recountings of the incident.
“A prolonged, intended sexual assault. That is what it is. That is what she claims it is,” he mused. “And yet, what amazed me – I could not credit what I hear, and really, frankly, the ladies who are listening tonight, ask yourself this: she then said – I think this was her third – because there are so many differences, frankly, between the first and the second and the third statement – she said that had he continued to just touch her breasts, grope her breasts, then perhaps, well, you know, there you are, one of those things, etcetera and so on. It was only when he attempted to do more with respect – I’m sorry to say, these are graphic – to go lower, did she actually think, ‘Oh, I’m going.’ Now again, how could anyone sit there for 15 minutes with a man next to her, being watched by the man on the other side of her, and simply say it’s okay for him to do what he’s been doing for 15 minutes, until he went lower, and then she left her seat?”
“This is really the reason why I’m here now, and why I’ve gathered the irrefutable evidence I have,” Gilberthorpe said. “Because in saying what she’s saying, if we can just take Donald Trump out of the equation a moment, it’s accusing two men – one of serious sexual assault and the other being complicit to that sexual assault. Now, again, it suits some people, either in the press or in other political parties, to actually say how bad this is. But you know, it’s worse than bad; it’s absolutely the most serious sexual assault.”
He said he was astounded by comments from Michelle Obama the other day: “And again I couldn’t believe what she was saying, because she was talking about these women, including Jessica, as though what they were saying had actually been tested through the courts, and she was reading from a judgment of a court where Trump had, in fact, been judged by his peers, by the judge and jury, and found guilty. But he hasn’t.”
“I’ll tell you what really gets to me, is the fact that, as I say, whether it was Trump or whether it was Clinton, I have no allegiance to any of them. In fact, in truth, I favor none of them. I need to stress that,” Gilberthorpe stated.
“As I say, whoever it was there, but let’s just say it was Joe Public; it was one of your listeners. Imagine how would they be able to take it? A lesser man, frankly, would have – well, I don’t know how anyone could take it. Because you look, with respect, if I may be so bold as to say yourself – if people, six or seven people are coming forward with no evidence whatsoever, but of saying the same thing, then that really is, you know it’s too much for most people to bear,” he ventured.
He concluded by saying, “So assured as I am of the evidence that I have is that I have stepped up to the plate. I know what is being said about me on Twitter and various, and frankly, it’s a side issue to me. I’m here, I’ve now come to New York, and I’m prepared to stand up and say – because I’d say it for anyone: ‘Enough’s enough.’ I mean, no guy should go through what this Trump’s going through.”
Breitbart News Sunday is broadcast live on SiriusXM Patriot Channel 125 from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. Eastern.
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