DONALD TRUMP: Asked whether he was describing sexual assault in video footage from 2005 in which he made sexually predatory and crude comments about women: “No, I didn’t say that at all.”

THE FACTS: Trump clearly described groping women without their permission in a footage captured by “Access Hollywood.” And Trump said he would automatically kiss women he considered beautiful.

“I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything,” Trump said. “Grab them by the (expletive). You can do anything.”

In the audio, first reported by The Washington Post, Trump also described his sexual advances toward a married woman. “I moved on her like a (expletive). But I couldn’t get there. And she was married.”

 

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.

 

CLINTON: On the impact of the 2011 New START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) agreement, which she helped negotiate as Secretary of State.

THE FACTS: New START placed tighter limits on deployed strategic weapons but Russia was actually already meeting the treaty’s limits, for the most part, when the treaty’s implementation began. Indeed, Russia has increased deployed nuclear weapons from 1,537 in February 2011 to 1,796 in September of this year. Also, the treaty does not restrict either country from stockpiling weapons, nor does it require them to destroy any existing weapons.

Russia’s total nuclear warhead arsenal has been on a steady decline, from 40,000, since 1986. During Obama’s presidency, Russia’s nuclear warhead total has hovered around 4,500 since 2012.

 

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: In response to a question about her saying that politicians need to have “both a public and a private position” in a 2013 paid speech, said, “As I recall, that was something I said about Abraham Lincoln after having seen the wonderful Steven Spielberg movie called Lincoln. It was a master class watching President Lincoln get the Congress to approve the 13th Amendment.”

TRUMP: “She lied. Now she’s blaming the lie on the late, great Abraham Lincoln.”

THE FACTS: Clinton’s recollection is correct.

Clinton invoked the movie “Lincoln,” and the deal-making that went into passage of the 13th Amendment, which outlawed slavery, in an April 2013 speech to the National Multifamily Housing Council.

According to excerpts of the speech included in hacked emails published last week by WikiLeaks, Clinton said politicians must balance “both a public and a private position” while making deals, a process she said was like making sausage.

“It is unsavory, and it always has been that way, but we usually end up where we need to be,” Clinton said according to the excerpts. “But if everybody’s watching, you know, all of the backroom discussions and the deals, you know, then people get a little nervous to say the least. So, you need both a public and a private position.”

 

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 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.

 

TRUMP: Asked whether he had ever sexually assaulted a women, said: “No, I have not.”

THE FACTS: There’s no proof that Trump sexually assaulted women, but he’s been accused of it before.

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: “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: Not true. Syria’s President Bashar Assad considers the Islamic State group to be among numerous “terrorist” groups that threaten his government, but his military is not fighting them. It is focused on combating Syrian opposition groups, some of which are supported by the United States.

The fight against the Islamic State militants is being waged by a U.S.-led coalition, with help from Turkey, by training, advising and equipping Syrian Arab and Kurdish fighters. While Moscow asserts that it is fighting the Islamic State extremists in Syria, the vast majority of its airstrikes has targeted opposition groups threatening the Assad government.

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