Ms Carroll told New York Magazine the real estate tycoon approached her in Bergdorf Goodman and started a friendly chat.

Mr Trump allegedly called the popular columnist “that advice lady” and asked her to help him pick out lingerie.

“Come advise me,” she quotes Mr Trump as saying. “I gotta buy a present.”

He then allegedly grabbed a see-through bodysuit and told Ms Carroll: “Go try this on!”

The two then joked about how they would both try on the bodysuit and went into a dressing room together.

Ms Carroll said that was when Mr Trump shoved her against a wall and pulled down her tights. She then claims Mr Trump was “forcing his fingers around my private area, thrusts his penis halfway — or completely, I’m not certain — inside me”.

Ms Carroll posed in the same outfit for the cover of this week’s New York, next to the headline: “This is what I was wearing 23 years ago when Donald Trump attacked me in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room.”

The incident took place in late 1995 or early 1996, Ms Carroll said. Mr Trump was married to television personality Marla Maples at the time. The couple divorced in 1999.

But in a statement today, Trump referred to it as “the story”, and said he had never met her.

“I’ve never met this person in my life. She is trying to sell a new book—that should indicate her motivation. It should be sold in the fiction section,” he said.

“Shame on those who make up false stories of assault to try to get publicity for themselves, or sell a book, or carry out a political agenda—like Julie Swetnick who falsely accused Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

“It’s just as bad for people to believe it, particularly when there is zero evidence. Worse still for a dying publication to try to prop itself up by peddling fake news — it’s an epidemic.”

He then went on to unleash on the lack of evidence she had to stand up her sexual assault allegation against him.

“Ms. Carroll & New York Magazine: No pictures? No surveillance? No video? No reports? No sales attendants around?? I would like to thank Bergdorf Goodman for confirming they have no video footage of any such incident, because it never happened,” he said.

“False accusations diminish the severity of real assault. All should condemn false accusations and any actual assault in the strongest possible terms.

“If anyone has information that the Democratic Party is working with Ms. Carroll or New York Magazine, please notify us as soon as possible. The world should know what’s really going on. It is a disgrace and people should pay dearly for such false accusations.”

A senior White House official also responded in a statement: “This is a completely false and unrealistic story surfacing 25 years after allegedly taking place and was created simply to make the President look bad.”

Ms Carroll also tees off on a number of other people she refers to as “hideous men,” including disgraced former chairman and CEO of CBS Corporation Les Moonves.

She claims Mr Moonves assaulted her in a Beverly Hills hotel during an interview in 1997. Mr Moonves “emphatically denies” the incident occurred.

This story first appeared in the New York Post and is reprinted with permission.