Alleged plane groper: ‘Trump says it’s OK to grab women’

A man arrested for groping a woman as she slept on a plane told officers that “the president of the United States says it’s OK”, a court has heard.

Bruce Michael Alexander, 49, appeared in federal court in Albuquerque yesterday, charged with abusive sexual contact against a female passenger on a flight from Houston, Texas, to Albuquerque, New Mexico, on Sunday.

According to court documents, the woman says she fell asleep shortly after take-off when she felt the defendant touch her “near her bra-line”, the Albuquerque Journal reports.

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At the time, she believed the contact could have been accidental. However, around half an hour later, “she was grabbed and groped again, this time ‘attentively’”.

The unidentified woman says she confronted Alexander and then asked a crew member to move her to another seat.

At the request of the crew, law enforcement agents were waiting at Albuquerque International Sunport when the flight touched down.

After being placed in handcuffs, Alexander is alleged to have “invoked President Trump’s infamous Access Hollywood comments”, says The Daily Beast, telling officers: “The president of the United States says it's OK to grab women by their private parts.”

However, in a later, written statement, Alexander denied the allegations and claimed he had slept through the flight. He remains in custody.

In the Access Hollywood tape recording from 2005, leaked in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, Trump can be heard bragging about groping women without their consent.

“And when you're a star, they let you do it,” he said. “You can do anything. Grab ‘em by the pussy.”