Republican officials were debating if there was a way to remove former President Donald Trump from the ballot in 2016 after the release of the "Access Hollywood" tape, former Trump assistant and Republican National Committee official Madeleine Westerhout told the court during the latest day of testimony at the Manhattan criminal hush money trial.
According to The Guardian, when questioned, Westerhout explained, "It’s my recollection that there were conversations about how it would be possible to replace him to the candidate if it came to that."
The Manhattan trial centers on Trump's alleged $130,000 hush payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels to buy her silence about an affair they had, to conceal that information from voters in 2016. District Attorney Alvin Bragg has characterized this as fundamentally a scheme to defraud voters — and the "Access Hollywood" tape is a core part of the context in which this happened.
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The "Access Hollywood" tape infamously nearly sunk Trump's campaign in the final weeks; in the conversation with Billy Bush originally recorded in 2005, Trump made numerous lewd remarks about women, and boasted that he could "grab them by the pussy" because he was a celebrity and women let him do anything. This occurred in the context of numerous women coming forward to accuse him of sexual assault and other misconduct.
Prosecutors were not allowed to directly play that footage for the jury; however, they read off key portions of the transcript.
While the detail that the RNC actively considered replacing Trump wasn't definitively known, there was an open civil war dividing the GOP over whether to still support him in the immediate aftermath of the tape's release. Several prominent Republicans, including many who have ultimately become close allies since he took office like Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), called on him to exit the race.
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