Trump's misconduct around young women was 'open secret': Former White House aide

Former White House adviser Alyssa Farah Griffin said that it was common knowledge throughout the Trump White House that the former president engaged in sexually inappropriate behavior around young women, reported The Daily Beast on Friday.

"Alyssa Farah Griffin, who is now a co-host of The View but was at the time among the dozen most senior staff in the West Wing, is sharing her experience in the Trump administration in the hopes that it will deter other women from working for the real estate mogul and reality TV star," the Beast reported.

"'Listen, the man’s the former commander-in-chief, he’s currently far and away the Republican frontrunner for president, and I think the American public needs to know who Donald Trump is," Griffin told the Beast's New Abnormal podcast.

"'I saw behavior and engagement with very young junior female staffers from the former president that made me uncomfortable,” she adds, alleging Trump’s behavior “was an open secret, open discussion in the West Wing,'" said the report. "'The way I was brought up, the way that I’ve behaved professionally is it is my duty to report that. So I took it to my direct report, which was the then-Chief of Staff Mark Meadows,' she added. 'He seemed very aware of the issue and said he was going to handle it.'"

This comes after Stephanie Grisham, the former White House press secretary, told CNN that she repeatedly did everything in her power to prevent Trump ever being alone in the room with one of her specific young female staffers, whom Trump casually made sexual comments about, because she was afraid of what he would do to her.

It also comes after Trump was found liable to the tune of $5 million for sexual abuse and defamation in the case brought by writer E. Jean Carroll, who has said the former president raped her in a department store dressing room in the late 1990s.

Trump, who refused to testify or call witnesses in his own defense in that trial, has repeatedly claimed this allegation was manufactured and that he didn't even know who Carroll was. At his CNN town hall at St. Anselm College in New Hampshire on Wednesday, he mockingly recounted Carroll's allegations, to laughter and applause from the predominantly Republican audience.