JD Vance repeatedly indicated in 2016 that he believed Donald Trump had committed sexual assault

CNN —

Ohio Sen. JD Vance, the Republican vice presidential nominee, repeatedly indicated in 2016 that he believed Donald Trump had committed sexual assault, even suggesting in one TV segment that in a “he said, she said” situation Trump was less credible than one of his accusers.

Vance appeared on a MSNBC segment in October 2016 on Trump’s alleged sexual misconduct in which an interview with Jessica Leeds, a former salesperson who accused Trump of groping and forcibly kissing her during a flight in the 1970s, was played. Vance said it was hard to believe Trump’s denials over Leeds.

“At a fundamental level, this is sort of a ‘he said, she said,’ right? And at the end of the day, do you believe Donald Trump, who always tells the truth? Just kidding,” said Vance sarcastically. “Or do you believe that woman on that tape?” he said, referring to Leeds.

But by May 2023, in a sign of his shift on Trump from open critic to fiercely loyal surrogate, Vance’s position changed entirely while invoking similar language: Vance said he believed his “friend” Trump, just after the former president was found liable by a jury for sexual abuse against author E. Jean Carroll.

“I think fundamentally the lawsuit is about something that happened 25 years ago. It’s a ‘he said, she said’ situation. And I trust my friend and the guy that I’ve known and gotten to know,” the Ohio Republican told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, about six months after winning his US Senate race with Trump’s endorsement.

Vance then suggested that the lawsuit, and the people funding it, was not about justice but about politics. “They are trying to take him down for political reasons. That, to me, is not about justice, that’s not about discovering the truth. That’s about