Chris Wattie / Reuters
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been forced to deny groping a young female reporter at a music festival in 2000 after a report about the alleged incident resurfaced online this week. The allegation was first published in an editorial in the Creston Valley Advance, a local newspaper in British Columbia, in August 2000. Photos of the editorial were widely shared on social media this week and gained further attention after being published by Breitbart on Thursday. The editorial accuses Trudeau of “inappropriately handling” and “groping” the young reporter, then reportedly telling her: “I’m sorry. If I had known you were reporting for a national paper, I never would have been so forward.” In a statement issued Thursday, a spokesperson for Trudeau said: “He remembers being in Creston for the Avalanche Foundation, but doesn’t think he had any negative interactions there.”