A woman who had accused Donald Trump of raping her when she was 13 years old has dropped her lawsuit against the Republican nominee.

One of the accuser’s attorneys, Thomas Meagher, filed a one-page voluntary dismissal in district court in New York late Friday. Neither he nor a second attorney listed immediately responded to questions about the document.

The woman, who had filed suit earlier this year under the pseudonym Jane Doe, had alleged that Trump and billionaire Jeffrey Epstein had raped her in 1994, when she was a 13-year-old aspiring model.

This week she abruptly canceled a plan to speak publicly about the allegations, and another attorney, Lisa Bloom, cited “numerous threats” against her client.

“She has been here all day, ready to do it, but unfortunately she is in terrible fear,” Bloom said during the week. Bloom’s mother, Gloria Allred, is an attorney representing several women who have accused Trump of sexual misconduct.

Trump had been given a tentative court date for the civil lawsuit of December 16th and has denied all the accusations made against him.

After Doe’s suit was filed in June, Alan Garten, a lawyer for the Trump Organization, said the claims were “a complete fabrication”.

“This is basically a sham lawsuit brought by someone who desires to impact the presidential election,” he said.

A virtually identical lawsuit was filed in April in California and dismissed for technical errors.

An investigation linked the lawsuits to Norm Lubow, a former television producer with a history of disputed allegations against celebrities. Both suits named Epstein, a financier who was convicted of soliciting sex from an underage girl in 2008.

The court order to Trump and Epstein’s attorneys gave no details of Doe’s complaint, but the original suit alleged that Trump assaulted her at Epstein’s home in Manhattan and at parties hosted by the financier. </s> LOOK: Anthony Weiner Spotted on Horseback at Sex Addiction Rehab 'Ranch'

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A woman who was suing Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump for allegedly tying her to a bed and raping her while she was a teenager in 1994 has backed off her accusations, Politico reported.

Known only as 'Jane Doe', the woman had alleged that, while she was in her early teens, Trump and wealthy investor Jeffrey Epstein raped her multiple times during parties at Epstein's home.

Epstein is a Level 3 sex offender.

The woman and her current lawyer, Lisa Bloom, were to appear at a news conference last week, but canceled, citing threats the woman had received.

The suit was the third time the allegations were made, Politico reported.

Trump, through his lawyer, previously denied the accusations as "frivolous".

"It is completely untrue," Alan Garten said.

Public doubt was cast over the validity of the first lawsuit against Trump, and the second was dismissed by a federal judge in May.

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New Fox News Poll: Clinton Ahead of Trump by 2 Points </s> ST. LOUIS — In a stunningly brazen move, Donald Trump met Sunday night with several women who have accused Bill Clinton of rape and other unwanted sexual advances, just over an hour before the Republican presidential nominee was stepping on the debate stage with the former president’s wife, Hillary Clinton.

The Trump pre-debate event was the clearest sign yet that he planned to use Bill Clinton’s extramarital affairs to try to distract from the swirling controversy over his own predatory remarks about women. Trump is under enormous pressure from his own Republican Party after the release of a 2005 video in which the businessman can be heard saying his fame allows him to “do anything” to women.

Trump refused to answer questions from reporters about the video during his meeting in a hotel conference room with Paula Jones, Kathy Shelton, Juanita Broaddrick and Kathleen Willey. Some of the women seated alongside him, however, were graphic in their accusations against the Clintons.

“Mr. Trump may have said some bad words, but Bill Clinton raped me and Hillary Clinton threatened me,” Broaddrick said. “I don’t think there’s any comparison.”

Broaddrick, a former Arkansas nursing home administrator, first claimed 17 years ago that Bill Clinton raped her during a meeting in Little Rock in 1978. Her lawsuit against him was dismissed in 2001 and criminal charges were never filed. Clinton has denied the allegations.

Trump is trying to change the subject from his own conduct. Even before Friday’s new revelations of his sexual remarks about women, his campaign was slumping. But the release of the 2005 video has some leading Republicans convinced the damage is insurmountable.

Even Trump’s most loyal supporters struggled to defend him on Sunday.

“They’re remarks you certainly don’t want to hear from anyone, much less a presidential candidate,” Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor, said on CNN. “I think he made a full and complete apology for it. He probably is going to do it again tonight.”

Clinton has stayed largely silent since the video was made public, though running mate Tim Kaine accused Trump of engaging in a “pattern of assaultive behavior.”

“I think there’s kind of a piece of the jigsaw puzzle missing in Donald Trump where he does not look at women and consider them as equal to himself,” Kaine said on CNN.

Trump’s troubles have almost completely overshadowed the release of hacked emails from the Clinton campaign that revealed the contents of previously secret paid speeches to Wall Street. Clinton told bankers behind closed doors that she favored “open trade.” Such remarks were at odds with her tough public comments.

Trump allies desperately hope the businessman can keep his focus in the debate on Clinton, raising questions about her trustworthiness and pushing his own populist economic ideas. The candidates will face questions in the town hall-style setting both from moderators and undecided voters seated with them on stage, a format that typically rewards candidates who show empathy and connect with the problems facing Americans.

But as Trump’s meeting with Clinton’s accusers indicated, he appeared to have other priorities.

Trump has long hinted he would raise Bill Clinton’s sexual history at debates. In what was billed as a videotaped apology for the 2005 videotaped remarks, Trump said “Bill Clinton has actually abused women” and Hillary Clinton “bullied, attacked, shamed and intimidated” her husband’s “victims.”

Clinton’s campaign appeared unconcerned by the prospect of Trump raising Bill Clinton’s past.

“If that is how he chooses to spend his time in the debate, then that’s his decision,” Clinton communications director Jennifer Palmieri told reporters. “I’m not sure that’s what voters are going to want to hear.”

At a fundraiser in Chicago, President Barack Obama called Trump’s rhetoric “disturbing.” Obama said “it tells you that he’s insecure enough that he pumps himself up by putting other people down.”

Trump’s own running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, has declared he could neither condone nor defend the remarks in the video revealed on Friday.

Other Republicans have taken the extraordinary step of revoking support for their party’s nominee. Among them: Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte — both are running for re-election — and the party’s 2008 nominee, Arizona Sen. John McCain. Some called on Trump to quit the race.

“I thought about years from now when my daughter Kate is old enough to know what is in those tapes and to understand what he is talking about,” Ayotte said of her 12-year-old daughter during a press conference Sunday. “I want her to know where I stood.”

Trump spent Sunday morning highlighting Twitter messages from supporters who slammed Republican leaders for abandoning him. In his own message, Trump said, “So many self-righteous hypocrites. Watch their poll numbers — and elections — go down!”

Republican leaders scheduled a rare Monday conference call for House GOP lawmakers, who are on recess. An email obtained by The Associated Press doesn’t specify the topic, but rank-and-file lawmakers believe it’s about Trump. </s> WASHINGTON — Donald Trump mischaracterized the record on Hillary Clinton’s defense of her husband and her own treatment of women when he brought up Bill Clinton’s sexual history and other episodes of the past. Clinton didn’t give a square account of the fallout from her email practices.

A look at some of the claims in the second presidential debate:

TRUMP, asked whether the predatory behavior with women that he described in a 2005 video amounted to sexual assault: “No, I didn’t say that at all.”

THE FACTS: He certainly didn’t own up to sexual assault in his boastful remarks in 2005. But he clearly described groping and kissing women without their permission, using his celebrity to impose himself on them.

“I don’t even wait,” he bragged in the video. “And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.” He went on: “Grab them by the p——. You can do anything.”

He described a specific sexual advance toward a married woman. “I moved on her like a bitch. But I couldn’t get there.”

TRUMP on Hillary Clinton’s behavior when, as a young public defender, she was assigned to represent an accused child rapist: “She’s seen on two separate occasions, laughing at the girl who was raped. Kathy Shelton, that young woman, is here with us tonight.”

THE FACTS: At no point was Clinton seen laughing at the victim.

In 1975, at the age of 12, Shelton was sexually assaulted in Northwest Arkansas. Clinton was asked by a judge overseeing the case to represent her alleged attacker. After the prosecution lost key evidence, Clinton’s client entered a plea to a lesser charge.

In an interview a decade later, Clinton expressed horror at the crime, but was recorded on tape laughing about procedural details of the case. The audio has been seized on by conservative groups looking to attack Clinton’s presidential candidacy but does not convey mirth at the girl’s fate.

TRUMP on women linked to Bill Clinton sexually: “Hillary Clinton attacked those same women and attacked them viciously.”

THE FACTS: There is no clear, independent evidence that Hillary Clinton “viciously” attacked women who alleged or confirmed sexual contact with her husband.

To be sure, in the 1992 Democratic primaries, she was deeply involved in the Clinton campaign’s effort to discredit one accuser, actress Gennifer Flowers, who alleged she had a long-running affair with Bill Clinton. Both Clintons acknowledged past troubles in their marriage but sought to undermine Flowers’ claims. Bill Clinton later acknowledged in a 1998 court deposition that he had a sexual encounter with Flowers.

Hillary Clinton was also quoted over the years making disparaging comments about other women linked with her husband.

What is lacking is proof that she engineered efforts to smear their reputation. Diane Blair, a political science professor and long-time Hillary Clinton friend who died in 2000, left behind an account of private interviews with Hillary Clinton in which she told her during the Monica Lewinsky affair that she considered the former White House intern a “narcissistic loony toon.”

CLINTON: “After a yearlong investigation, there is no evidence that anyone hacked the server I was using, and there is no evidence that anyone can point to, at all … that any classified material ended up in the wrong hands.”

THE FACTS: Maybe, maybe not. While there’s indeed no direct, explicit evidence that classified information was leaked or that her server was breached, it was nevertheless connected to the internet in ways that made it more vulnerable to hackers — and the public may never know who saw them. FBI Director James Comey has said: “We assess it is possible that hostile actors gained access to Secretary Clinton’s personal e-mail account.”

The Associated Press previously discovered that her private server, which has been a major campaign issue for Clinton and the focus of U.S. investigations, appeared to allow users to connect to it openly over the internet and control it remotely. That practice, experts said, wasn’t intended to be used without additional protective measures, and was the subject of U.S. government warnings at the time over attacks from even amateur hackers.

Since the AP in early 2013 traced her server to her home in Chappaqua, New York, Clinton hasn’t fully explained who administered her server, if it received software updates to plug security holes or if it was monitored for unauthorized access. It’s also unclear what, if any, encryption software Clinton’s server may have used to communicate with official U.S. government email accounts.

Comey has said Clinton and her staff “were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.” But he said the FBI won’t recommend criminal charges against Clinton for use of the server while she was secretary of state and closed the investigation.

TRUMP on Bill Clinton: “He lost his license. He had to pay an $850,000 fine.”

THE FACTS: Trump’s facts are, at best, jumbled. In 1998, lawyers for Bill Clinton settled with former Arkansas state employee Paul Jones for $850,000 in her four-year lawsuit alleging sexual harassment. It was not a fine, and there was no finding or admission of wrongdoing.

Trump erred in describing the legal consequences of that case. In a related case before the Arkansas State Supreme Court, Clinton was fined $25,000 and his Arkansas law license was suspended for five years. Clinton also faced disbarment before the U.S. Supreme Court but he opted to resign from the court’s practice instead of facing any penalties.

CLINTON: “We are now, for the first time ever, energy independent.”

THE FACTS: Clinton inaccurately overstates the case. For the first time in decades the United States gets more energy domestically than it imports, but it is not yet energy independent as the country continues to rely on oil imports, from the Mideast and elsewhere. Estimates vary as to when the U.S. might achieve energy independence.

Domestic oil production has greatly increased in recent years. And at the same time oil imports as a percentage of consumption have dropped, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Oil imports have dropped from 3.58 billion barrels in 2008 to 2.68 billion barrels in 2015.

TRUMP: “She (Clinton) wants to go to a single-payer plan, which would be a disaster … she wants to go to single-payer, which means the government basically rules everything.”

THE FACTS: It’s Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders — not Clinton — who supports a Canada-style government-run health care system.

While Clinton’s health care proposals would expand the government’s role in the health care system, she’s not talking about dismantling the current system, which is a hybrid of employer-sponsored coverage, government programs like Medicare and Medicaid, and individually purchased insurance.

As president, Clinton would push for a government-sponsored insurance plan in the health care markets created by President Barack Obama’s health care law, as an alternative to private insurance. But those markets currently cover about 11 million people, while about 155 million have job-based coverage.

In excerpts from Clinton’s paid speeches she gave behind closed doors, though, she did praise Canada’s universal coverage and said that single-payer systems were “as good or better” when it came to basic medical care. But she also noted drawbacks of such health care systems, such as longer wait times for procedures.

TRUMP: “I would not have had our troops in Iraq.”

THE FACTS: Trump actually offered lukewarm support for invading Iraq before the war began. He’s repeatedly and erroneously claimed to have come out against the war before it started, telling Howard Stern in September 2002: “Yeah I guess so,” when asked if he would back an invasion.

This time, his claim was slightly different — that if he had been president at the time, he would not have invaded. It’s conceivable, at least, that he would have taken a position in office at odds with his stance as a private citizen. A few months before the March 2003 invasion, he did tell Fox News that the economy and threats from North Korea posed greater problems than Iraq.

TRUMP: “I don’t like Assad at all. But Assad is killing ISIS. Russia is killing ISIS.”

THE FACTS: Only partially true. Syria’s President Bashar Assad considers the Islamic State group to be among numerous “terrorist” groups that threaten his government. His overstretched military is mainly focused on combating Syrian opposition groups, some of which are supported by the United States. Assad does use air power against IS-held areas and his ground forces are engaged in fighting with the extremists in Deir el-Zour in the east.

TRUMP, asked whether he had ever sexually assaulted a woman: “No, I have not.”

THE FACTS: He’s been accused of it but a case has not been proved.

Trump’s first wife, Ivana Trump, accused him of rape in a deposition in the early 1990s. She later said she didn’t mean it literally, but rather that she felt violated. Trump was also sued for sexual harassment in 1997 by Jill Harth, a woman who, along with her romantic partner, was pitching Trump to get involved in a pin-up competition in the early 1990s.

In a recent interview with The New York Times, Harth said Trump ran his hands up her skirt during dinner in 1992, and on another occasion, she said Trump tried to force himself on her in his daughter Ivanka’s bedroom. “Next thing I know he’s pushing me against a wall and has his hands all over me,” Harth told the newspaper. Harth dropped her harassment lawsuit against Trump after he settled a separate breach of contract lawsuit. Trump has denied Harth’s allegations.

TRUMP: “She is raising your taxes and I am lowering your taxes. … She’s raising everybody’s taxes massively.”

CLINTON: “He would end up raising taxes on middle-class families”

THE FACTS: Clinton is not raising taxes on “everybody.” Nearly all of Hillary Clinton’s proposed tax increases would affect the wealthiest 5 percent of Americans, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.

Trump is proposing massive tax cuts for both individuals and businesses. Yet it’s not clear that all Americans would benefit. The conservative Tax Foundation estimates that the bottom 80 percent of taxpayers would see their after-tax income rise from 0.8 percent to 1.9 percent. The wealthiest 1 percent would see their after-tax incomes rise at least 10.2 percent to 16 percent.

Yet Clinton may be right that Trump’s proposals would increase taxes on many middle- and lower-income families. Trump’s plan eliminates the personal exemption, which currently allows households to reduce their taxable income by $4,050 for each member of the household, including children. He would replace that with higher deductions, but for many single parents and families with three or more children, the standard deduction wouldn’t be large enough to offset the loss of personal exemptions.

TRUMP, asked whether his tweets directing people to check out a sex tape showed discipline: “It wasn’t ‘check out a sex tape.’”

THE FACTS: Yes it was. Trump tweeted “check out sex tape and past” of former 1996 Miss Universe Alicia Machado, a woman whom Clinton discussed in the first presidential debate as an example of Trump’s derogatory comments about women.

Machado has publicly supported Clinton and criticized Trump for body-shaming her by calling her “Miss Piggy” and threatening to take away her crown for gaining weight.

The video Trump appeared to be referring to was from a Spanish reality show. In 2005, Machado, who was a contestant on the show, was filmed in bed, under the covers with a male contestant and speaking sexually about his body parts. The grainy footage doesn’t show nudity, though Machado has said that she was having sex in the footage.

CLINTON: “If we repeal (Obama’s health care law) as Donald has proposed, all of those benefits I have mentioned are lost to everybody … and then we will have to start all over again.”

THE FACTS: Clinton is essentially correct. Congressional Republicans have promised their replacement plan for Obama’s health care law would provide coverage for the uninsured, but they have not provided enough detail to allow a rigorous comparison. A complete repeal of the health care law would wipe the slate clean and lawmakers would have to start over.

Republicans have expressed support for some goals of the health care law, such as assuring that people with health problems can get coverage, but whether a GOP replacement plan would work as well remains to be seen. Trump’s own plan was recently evaluated by the Commonwealth Fund and the RAND Corporation, and the analysis found would increase the number of uninsured people by about 20 million. </s> LOS ANGELES — A new lawsuit filed by the porn star known as Stormy Daniels claims President Donald Trump never signed a hush agreement regarding an alleged sexual encounter between the two and therefore the agreement is void.

According to the legal complaint filed in California state court and tweeted out by her lawyer on Tuesday, Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, signed the document on behalf of the President instead.

The porn star, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, claims in the lawsuit to have had an affair with Trump several years prior to his presidency. However, the lawsuit claims that when he was running for office and multiple women were coming forward to share stories of their own alleged encounters with the then-Republican presidential candidate, Cohen intervened in an attempt to keep Clifford from coming forward as well.

The lawsuit says Cohen has continued his attempts at silencing Clifford — including as recently as February 27, 2018.

“To be clear, the attempts to intimidate Ms. Clifford into silence and ‘shut her up’ in order to ‘protect Mr. Trump’ continue unabated,” the lawsuit states. “For example, only days ago on or about February 27, 2018, Mr. Trump’s attorney Mr. Cohen surreptitiously initiated a bogus arbitration proceeding against Ms. Clifford in Los Angeles. Remarkably, he did so without even providing Ms. Clifford with notice of the proceeding and basic due process.”

NBC News first reported on Clifford’s complaint against Trump.

Just weeks before the 2016 election, Cohen reportedly created a private LLC to pay off Clifford, The Wall Street Journal reported in January.

Following initial reports last month that Cohen had made the payment, he said in a statement that Trump “vehemently denies” any encounter between the two. </s> Stormy Daniels, the porn star whom Donald Trump’s attorney acknowledges paying $130,000 just before Election Day, believes she is now free to discuss an alleged sexual encounter with the man who is now president.

NEW YORK — Stormy Daniels, the porn star whom Donald Trump’s attorney acknowledges paying $130,000 just before Election Day, believes she is now free to discuss an alleged sexual encounter with the man who is now president, her manager told The Associated Press.

At the same time, developments in the bizarre case fueled questions about whether such a payment could violate federal campaign finance laws.

Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, believes that Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, invalidated a non-disclosure agreement after two news stories were published Tuesday: one in which Cohen told The New York Times he made the six-figure payment with his personal funds, and another in the Daily Beast, which reported that Cohen was shopping a book proposal that would touch on Daniels’ story, said the manager, Gina Rodriguez.

“Everything is off now, and Stormy is going to tell her story,” Rodriguez said Wednesday.

At issue is what, exactly, happened inside a Lake Tahoe, Nevada, hotel room in 2006 between Trump, then a reality TV star, and Clifford, who was promoting a porn production company during a celebrity golf tournament.

In the years since, Clifford has claimed that she and Trump had sex once and then carried on a subsequent yearslong platonic relationship. But she has also, through a lawyer, denied the two had an affair. Trump’s lawyer, Cohen, has denied there was ever an affair.

The actress first detailed her account of an alleged extramarital affair with Trump in 2011, when the celebrity website The Dirty published it but then removed the material under the threat of a lawsuit, according to the site’s founder, Nik Richie.

Her story then remained largely out of public view until a month before the 2016 presidential election, when the website The Smoking Gun published an account that went mostly unnoted by major news organizations.

In January, The Wall Street Journal reported that a limited liability company in Delaware formed by Cohen made the six-figure payment to the actress to keep her from discussing the affair during the presidential campaign.

Cohen said the payment was made with his own money, and that “neither the Trump Organization nor the Trump campaign was a party to the transaction with Ms. Clifford, and neither reimbursed me for the payment, either directly or indirectly.”

He was responding to inquiries from the Federal Election Commission, which is investigating an advocacy group’s complaint that the October 2016 transaction violated campaign finance laws.

The case was reminiscent of the 2012 prosecution of former Democratic vice presidential nominee John Edwards, who faced six criminal charges after a pair of his wealthy friends spent nearly $1 million to support his pregnant mistress, Rielle Hunter, during his 2008 presidential run.

Jurors eventually acquitted Edwards on one charge of accepting illegal campaign contributions, but were unable to reach a verdict on the five remaining counts including conspiracy and making false statements. The case ended when prosecutors elected not to retry Edwards.

As in that case, the payment by Trump’s lawyer was not reported as a campaign expenditure nor an in-kind contribution, and the origin of the money is still unclear, said Paul Ryan, a vice president at Common Cause, the group that filed the complaint.

But Bradley Smith, the Republican chairman of the Federal Election Commission from 2000 to 2005, was skeptical that the payment by Cohen could pose a campaign finance issue.

“You’d have to prove that it was a coordinated expenditure, and that the reason it was done was for the benefit of the campaign,” he said. If the payment was made to protect Trump’s brand or avoid personal embarrassment, he said, that would likely not be a campaign problem.

At the time of the payment, which followed the release of footage from “Access Hollywood,” in which Trump was recorded bragging about grabbing women’s privates, Clifford was negotiating with multiple national news networks about telling her story.

A White House spokeswoman referred all questions about the payment to Cohen.

The alleged affair between the actress and Trump occurred in 2006, a year after his marriage to his third wife, Melania.

A lawyer for Clifford, Keith Davidson, has previously distributed statements on her behalf denying there was any affair.

But in a 2011 interview with the gossip magazine In Touch Weekly, the actress — who the magazine said passed a polygraph exam — said the two had sex on one occasion and she described subsequent in-person meetings, phone calls and discussions about a potential TV appearance. The AP has previously reported that In Touch held off on publishing her account after Cohen threatened to sue the publication. It published the interview last month.

In recent weeks the actress has played coy, declining to elaborate when pressed on ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”

Rodriguez said her client will soon announce how and when she will tell her story publicly. The celebrity website The Blast first reported the contention that Cohen’s comments freed Clifford from her nondisclosure agreement. </s> President Donald Trump called Michael Avenatti a “third rate lawyer who is good at making false accusations” after the attorney released an affidavit from a client who claims she witnessed Supreme Court nominee Bret Kavanaugh be “present” during “gang rapes” at parties in the early 1980s.

Avenatti’s client, identified as Julie Swetnick, further alleges she was the victim of one of these gang rapes during which Kavanaugh was on hand in 1982, when he was in high school.

Fox News reported that Kavanaugh responded to the latest allegation saying, “This is ridiculous and from ‘The Twilight Zone.’ I don’t know who this is and this never happened.”

Trump blasted Avenatti on Twitter, writing that he “is a third rate lawyer who is good at making false accusations, like he did on me and like he is now doing on Judge Brett Kavanaugh. He is just looking for attention and doesn’t want people to look at his past record and relationships — a total low-life!

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Swetnick’s accusation follows one by Christine Blasey Ford who claimed Kavanaugh held her down on a bed and groped and tried to take her clothes off during a high school party, which she believes likely occurred in the summer of 1982.

Additionally, another woman, Deborah Ramirez, says Kavanaugh exposed himself to her during a party at Yale University in the early 1980s, according to Fox News.

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina shared Trump’s view that the latest allegation presented by Avenatti needs to be viewed with a high level of skepticism.

“I have a difficult time believing any person would continue to go to — according to the affidavit — 10 parties over a two-year period where women were routinely gang raped and not report it,” Graham tweeted.

Avenatt fired back via Twitter. “.@realDonaldTrump @ChuckGrassley @LindseyGrahamSC — Are you three privileged, white men calling my client Julie a liar? How dare you attack a sexual assault victim. She has risked her life to do the right thing. You should be ashamed of yourselves. Your actions are disgraceful.”

In another tweet, the attorney wrote Trump “pretends he is a tough guy,” but “he is nothing of the kind.”

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“That is why the majority of America & the UN laughs at him,” Avenatti added.

According to Fox News, Trump told reporters at the United Nations in New York he is hopeful all the late-breaking controversy and allegations regarding Kavanaugh will be over in a few days and that he will confirmed and become a “Supreme Court justice who will go down as one of our greatest ever.”

Currently, a Senate Judiciary Committee vote on Kavanaugh’s nomination is set for Friday, with a vote of the full Senate to follow early next week.

We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards. </s> A pedestrian walks past the site for the third presidential debate between Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton at UNLV in Las Vegas, Tuesday, Oct. 18, 2016.

WASHINGTON — Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump's ugly and acrimonious battle for the White House is barreling toward the end, with the candidates taking the debate stage Wednesday night for one final primetime showdown.

For Trump, the debate is perhaps his last opportunity to turn around a race that appears to be slipping away from him. His comments about women and a flood of sexual assault accusations have deepened his unpopularity with women and limited his pathways to victory. His supporters remain intensely loyal, but there are few signs he's attracting the new backers he desperately needs.

Clinton takes the stage facing challenges of her own. While the electoral map currently leans in her favor, the Democrat is facing a new round of questions about her authenticity and trustworthiness, concerns that have trailed her throughout the campaign. The hacking of her top campaign adviser's emails revealed a candidate that is averse to apologizing, can strike a different tone in private than in public, and makes some decisions only after painstaking political deliberations.

The last in a trio of presidential debates, Wednesday's contest in Las Vegas comes just under three weeks from Election Day and with early voting already underway in several key battleground states.

Trump has leaned on an increasingly brazen strategy in the campaign's closing weeks, including peddling charges that the election will be rigged, despite no evidence of widespread voter fraud in U.S. presidential contests. He's also charged that Clinton attacked and intimidated women involved with her husband's affairs, bringing three women who accused former President Bill Clinton of unwanted sexual contact and even rape to sit in the audience for the second debate. The former president has never been charged with crimes related to the encounters, though he did settle a sexual harassment lawsuit.

Trump is bringing President Barack Obama's half-brother, Malik Obama, as his debate guest. Clinton is bringing billionaire and frequent Trump critic Mark Cuban and Hewlett Packard Enterprise CEO Meg Whitman, one of the former secretary of state's highest-profile Republican backers.

Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon said the Democratic nominee "will be ready for whatever scorched-earth tactics (Trump) tries" in Wednesday's debate.

Republicans desperately hope Trump can close the campaign by focusing on Clinton's weaknesses, a strategy some privately concede may not be enough at this point for him to win, but could help GOP Senate candidates salvage their races.

The businessman has shown flashes of renewed focus in recent days, including highlighting a senior State Department official's request that the FBI help reduce the classification of an email from Clinton's private server. It was to be part of a bargain that would have allowed the FBI to deploy more agents in foreign countries, though it was not immediately clear whether the State Department official or someone at the FBI first raised that prospect.

Campaigning Tuesday in Colorado, Trump called the matter "felony corruption" and worse than the Watergate scandal that brought down President Richard Nixon.

Clinton, who has meticulously prepared for the three debates at the expense of time in battleground states, visibly rattled Trump in their first showdown by using his own controversial comments about women and minorities against him. The businessman was on the defense at the start of the second debate —” which came days after the release of a video in which he brags about kissing and grabbing women — but ended on stronger footing, hammering Clinton for being a creature of Washington who won't be able to bring about change.

Trump denied in the second debate that he had made the kind of unwanted sexual advances he is heard describing on the video. His denial prompted some of the women who have since publicly accused him of assault to come forward.

The Republican has acquiesced to some advisers who pressed for him to do more serious preparations after the first debate. Still, he's continued to eschew the mock debates and multiday prep sessions that he's criticizing Clinton for.

"She's been doing this for 30 years and now she has to do debate prep for five days," Trump said. "You know what the debate prep is? It's resting. It's lying down and going to sleep.

Moderator Chris Wallace —€” the first Fox News journalist to moderate a debate —€” has said he plans to ask the candidates about debt and entitlements, immigration, the economy, the Supreme Court, foreign hot spots and their fitness to be president. He aims to spend 15 minutes on each topic.

AP writer Jill Colvin in Colorado Springs, Colorado, contributed to this report. </s> Judge Brett Kavanaugh was accused Wednesday by another woman of engaging in sexual misconduct at parties while he was a student at Georgetown Preparatory School in the 1980s.

The allegation came from Julie Swetnick, 55, who like Kavanaugh, 53, grew up in the Washington suburbs. In a statement posted on Twitter by her lawyer, Swetnick said she observed the future Supreme Court nominee at parties where women were verbally abused, inappropriately touched, made “disoriented” with alcohol or drugs and “gang raped.”

She said she witnessed Kavanaugh participating in some of the misconduct, including lining up outside a bedroom where “numerous boys” were “waiting for their ‘turn’ with a girl inside the room.” Swetnick said she was raped at one of the parties and believed she had been drugged, but did not directly accuse Kavanaugh of raping her.

None of Swetnick’s claims could be independently corroborated by The New York Times, and her lawyer, Michael Avenatti, declined to make her available for an interview.

President Donald Trump said on Twitter that Avenatti was a “third-rate lawyer who is good at making false accusations” and suggested he was “just looking for attention.” Avenatti rose to fame through his representation of Stephanie Clifford, the pornographic film actress known as Stormy Daniels who has taken on Trump.

The White House issued a statement from the judge describing the allegations as “ridiculous and from the Twilight Zone” and denying that he even knew Swetnick. “I don’t know who this is and this never happened,” the judge’s statement said.

Unlike two other women who have accused Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct, one who went to college with him and another who went to a sister high school, Swetnick offered no explanation in her statement of how she came to attend the same parties as he did, nor did she identify other people who could verify her account.

Kavanaugh has repeatedly denied allegations that he behaved inappropriately toward women. On Monday, the judge, with his wife at his side, denied on Fox News that he had ever assaulted anyone, saying he had always “treated women with dignity and respect.”

Asked if he had participated in or was aware of any gang rape at a party he attended, he said: “That’s totally false and outrageous. I’ve never done any such thing, known about any such thing.”

On Wednesday afternoon, more than 60 classmates from Georgetown Prep and women from sister schools who say they knew Kavanaugh in high school signed a letter to rebut Swetnick’s allegations and deny ever having met her. “We never witnessed any behavior that even approaches what is described in this allegation. It is reprehensible,” said the letter, which was addressed to members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. “Brett Kavanaugh is a good man. He has always treated women with respect and decency.”

Avenatti had used his Twitter account for days to promote what he said would be explosive allegations against Kavanaugh. And immediately after he shared what he called a sworn affidavit from Swetnick, it drew immediate coverage across social media and cable news as another revelation to rock the confirmation process.

Asked in a brief interview why Swetnick would be attending parties with high schoolers during her college years, Avenatti said the parties in question included people of both high school and college ages.

Avenatti said he had corroborating witnesses who could back up Swetnick’s accounts, but was not ready to present them because he was waiting to see if the Senate Judiciary Committee would begin a full investigation into her claims as he demanded, along with an FBI inquiry. In her statement, Swetnick said she would be willing to appear before the committee.

In an email to Avenatti on Wednesday afternoon, Mike Davis, the committee’s chief nominations counsel, offered to arrange an interview with Swetnick.

“Please let me know immediately whether your client will agree to an interview by committee investigators today,” Davis wrote in the email, which was obtained by The Times. “We can do a telephone interview anytime this afternoon or evening.”

In recent days, Kavanaugh and Trump, who nominated him in July, have pushed back against the allegations relating to Kavanaugh’s treatment of women. Trump called the claims a “con game” by Democrats who were “trying to delay and obstruct his confirmation.”

Swetnick’s allegations come days after Deborah Ramirez, a Yale classmate, told The New Yorker that Kavanaugh exposed himself to her during a drinking game while they were students.

The accusation also comes as Kavanaugh is on the verge of testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee about an allegation made this month by Christine Blasey Ford, who says he sexually assaulted her in high school. Blasey, who is sometimes known by her married name, Ford, is also expected to testify.

Swetnick’s claims included Mark Judge, a classmate of Kavanaugh’s. Judge, who has written about his alcohol-fueled years at Georgetown Prep, had denied the claim made by Blasey that he was in the room during the alleged incident. Barbara Van Gelder, a lawyer for Judge, said Wednesday that he denied the allegations in Swetnick’s statement.

Swetnick grew up in Montgomery County, Maryland, graduating from Gaithersburg High School in 1980, according to a résumé posted online. She took classes at Montgomery College, a local community college, a spokesman for the school confirmed. Her résumé listed an affiliation with the University of Maryland, College Park, but a university spokeswoman could not confirm her attendance. Kavanaugh graduated from Georgetown Prep in 1983 before studying at Yale.

In her statement, Swetnick said she met Kavanaugh and Judge in 1980 or 1981 when she was introduced to them at a house party in the Washington area. She saw them to be “extremely close friends” who were “consistently” together at social gatherings. She said she attended at least 10 house parties in the Washington area from 1981 to 1983 where the two were present. She said the parties were common, taking place almost every weekend during the school year.

She said she observed Kavanaugh drinking “excessively” at many of the parties and engaging in “abusive and physically aggressive behavior toward girls, including pressing girls against him without their consent, ‘grinding’ against girls, and attempting to remove or shift girls’ clothing to expose private body parts.”

“I also witnessed Brett Kavanaugh behave as a ‘mean drunk’ on many occasions at these parties,” she said.

She said that Kavanaugh, Judge and others would try to spike the punch at parties in an effort to intoxicate women, who would be targeted and taken advantage of. In 1982, she said, she “became the victim of one of these ‘gang’ or ‘train’ rapes where Mark Judge and Brett Kavanaugh were present.” She said she told at least two people about the alleged episode shortly afterward. “I also witnessed efforts by Mark Judge, Brett Kavanaugh and others to cause girls to become inebriated and disoriented so they could then be ‘gang raped’ in a side room or bedroom by a ‘train’ of numerous boys,” she said in the statement.

A lawyer for Kavanaugh, Beth Wilkinson, appearing on CNN, denied the allegations but said Avenatti should have gone directly to the police if he believed them to be true. “There must be a reason, as a lawyer, that he didn’t take these allegations to the police himself,” she said. “No one is stopping him.”

In the intervening years, Swetnick has mostly remained in the Washington area, where she has worked as a web and information technologist. She has had a variety of public- and private-sector jobs over the years, including working for federal government agencies. Her father was a scientist with NASA.

According to her résumé and her statement, she has held several government clearances, including with the State Department and the Justice Department.

Daniel Pfeffer, a neighbor of Swetnick’s in Washington, said he hadn’t seen her for a month or two. “She’s a very sweet girl,” he said. “My girlfriend and I have had drinks on her patio now and then, and we’ve had her over for dinner.” He said Swetnick had never discussed Kavanaugh or any allegations about him.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Steve Eder, Jim Rutenberg and Rebecca R. Ruiz © 2018 The New York Times
A woman who was allegedly raped by Donald Trump drops her lawsuit against the presidential candidate.