President Trump took to Twitter on Saturday morning to seemingly cast doubt on the multiple women who’ve accused two of his former aides of physical abuse.
“Peoples [sic] lives are being shattered and destroyed by a mere allegation," the president wrote, despite the fact that in one of the incidents involving his former aide, there is a graphic photo accompanying the allegations. “Some are true and some are false. Some are old and some are new. There is no recovery for someone falsely accused—life and career are gone. Is there no such thing any longer as Due Process?”
The comment comes after White House Staff Secretary Rob Porter resigned last week after two ex-wives alleged that he had been physically and emotionally abusive to them.
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As The Daily Beast reported, the president was already privately voicing doubt about Porter’s accusers. And on Friday, he reminded reporters that Porter had maintained his innocence.
“We hope he has a wonderful career,” Trump said. “It was very sad when we heard about it.”
And later that day, another White House staffer, speechwriter David Sorensen, resigned due to his own domestic-abuse allegations. In the Washington Post's story about the allegations, Sorensen, was accused of running over his ex-wife's foot with a car, putting a cigarette out on her hand, and grabbing "her menacingly by her hair while they were alone on their boat in remote waters off Maine’s coast."
Trump has a long history of casting doubt on women who allege sexual misconduct: He has repeatedly and publicly tarred the dozen-plus women who’ve accused him of groping and assault, calling them all “liars”; and he gave a full-throated endorsement to Republican Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore, privately doubting the veracity of credible accusations that Moore engaged in sexual misconduct with underage women.
The president’s call for due process is all the more striking given his own remarks about the so-called “Central Park Five” over the years. He has maintained that the group of five black teenagers were guilty in a high-profile 1989 rape case, despite their exoneration with DNA evidence.
At the time, he took out a full-page ad in New York's major newspapers calling for the death penalty for the teens—despite due process.
