LONDON: Hillary Clinton's supporters are calling on her wealthy donors to pay the legal fees of anyone who leaks unaired footage from The Apprentice, after the British producer of the show reportedly threatened staff with a $5million (pounds 4million) law suit if they published material damaging to Donald Trump.
Chris Nee, an award-winning Irish American producer, said she had heard rumours that Mr Trump was recorded using the N-word.
Mr Trump starred in The Apprentice from its inception in 2004, and for months former contestants have been queuing up to speak out about his off-camera behaviour. After the disclosure last week of 2005 footage in which Mr Trump bragged about sexual assault, the clamour to hear the unpublished tapes of The Apprentice has grown.
London-born Mark Burnett, a former paratrooper who served in the Falklands and is president of MGM Television, has resisted calls to release the archive. He has allegedly made former employees sign a $5million bond not to leak the footage. Yet on Twitter people were calling on Clinton backers,
including Warren Buffett and businessman Mark Cuban - Mr Trump's nemesis - to offer to pay the legal fees.
David Brock, who runs a media group that backs Mrs Clinton, said he would be willing to pay their fees. More than 20 former contestants, crew members, and editors have told AP Mr Trump treated women on the show inappropriately, including talking about which contestants he would like to have sex with and rating them by breast size. "If there was a break in the conversation, he would then look at one of the female cast members, saying 'you're looking kind of hot today, I love that dress on you', then he would turn to one of the male cast members and say 'wouldn't you sleep with her?' and then everyone would laugh," a former crew member, who spoke anonymously due to a non-disclosure agreement, told AP. A source told Buzzfeed Mr Burnett, an evangelical Christian, "is pro-Trump and has made clear to his teams that he will sue anyone who leaks".
Mr Burnett has previously described Mr Trump as "not the kind of enemy you'd want". In a BBC documentary in 2010, Mr Burnett said: "If someone metaphorically pushed him, he'd push back five times as hard. Not twice as hard, but five, 10 times as hard."
Rebecca Marks, an NBC spokesman, told AP she did not know if the network has footage in storage, and if it did, it would not be allowed to release it.
Yesterday, a video interview unearthed in New Zealand showed Mr Trump talking about his womanising image and saying it was fortunate he did not have to run for political office.