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The videotape of Donald Trump that is shaking up the presidential election sat forgotten on a shelf at NBC's "Access Hollywood" until just a few days ago.

On Monday, according to an NBC source, one of the entertainment newsmagazine's producers remembered Trump's 2005 taping session with former "Access" co-host Billy Bush.

Trump's offensive comments about Alicia Machado were still making waves. And the Associated Press had just published a detailed story quoting former "Apprentice" employees saying Trump "was lewd and sexist" while taping the reality show.

With that in mind, a producer dug up the tape.

By mid-week, executive producer Rob Silverstein and his producing team had taken a look at its contents, and discovered that among other things it included a moment in which Trump told Bush, "And when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything... Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything."

It also included Trump saying he once tried and failed to have sex with Nancy O'Dell, who was Bush's co-host at the time.

After reviewing the tape, "we were debating what to do" with it, an NBC source explained.

By Friday morning, Silverstein had decided to broadcast it, and a script had been written. The story was not slated to air on Friday night's edition of the show, however.

That means the earliest it would have aired is Monday night -- after Sunday's presidential debate.

Another NBC source confirmed that "Access" was working on a story, and that NBC News knew about it, but said that as of Friday morning the story "wasn't quite finalized."

That's when Silverstein was notified that David Fahrenthold of The Washington Post had come into possession of a copy.

Fahrenthold, who has been reporting for months on Trump's charitable donations and the Trump Foundation, was contacted around 11 a.m. on Friday by a source who told him about the footage, according to a Post story about how he got this scoop.

Fahrenthold asked NBC for comment about the tape around noon Eastern time. The producers at "Access," which is based in California, were blindsided by Fahrenthold's call.

According to the Post, Farenthold knows the identity of the person who leaked the video to him, but will not disclose it.

Sources at NBC believe someone inside NBC downloaded the footage from one of the network's video servers. The tape was accessible internally since the "Access" story was already in the works.

Silverstein told Page Six on Friday afternoon, "I don't know who leaked it. I have no idea."

After the Post called NBC for comment, NBC News staff hurried to finish a story about it. So did the "Access" staff.

On Friday night's edition of the newsmagazine, co-host Natalie Morales reported on the tape, linking it to Monday's investigation by The A.P.

Morales also noted that Trump has appeared on the show "hundreds of times" over the years.

"In the course of reporting on Mr. Trump, we have reviewed much of our own footage," she said.

So does "Access" have other tapes of Trump speaking in vulgar terms? One of the NBC sources said, "Not that I know of."

O'Dell and "Entertainment Tonight," the show she now co-anchors, both declined to comment. But Brad Bessey, the former executive producer of "Entertainment Tonight," said in a tweet that O'Dell is "is classy, beautiful, family-focused, intelligent & a great journalist. Above the sexist objectification of @realDonaldTrump."

CNNMoney (New York) First published October 7, 2016: 7:18 PM ET

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How the shocking hot mic tape of Donald Trump was exposed ...

Just days before the second presidential debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, the Republican nominee ventured to New Hampshire for a test run of sorts. He hosted an invitation-only town hall in Sandown.

Though the idea of a town hall, just days but the second presidential debate, had all the trappings of debate prep, Trump insisted that it was not.

"And by the way they were saying, this is practice for Sunday, this isnt practice, this has nothing to do with Sunday, we are just here, because we just wanted to be here," he said. "And you know, Hillary, frankly, they talk about debate prep, this is not debate prep, shes resting. Shes resting. And I want to be with the American people, I want to be with the people from New Hampshire, and she wants to rest.

Trump, while discussing his recent trip to Nevada, took time to share with the crowd at the Sandown Town Hall what he learned about Hispanic-Americans.

"I just got back from Las Vegas, where we gave a tremendous, I mean we had a tremendous crowd of people, lot of Hispanics, Latinos they like to be called in that area, you know that, right? Hispanics and Latinos.

But, he eventually pivoted back to the debate, answering a questioner who asked if Trump held back during the first debate.

"Yeah, I did hold back, I thought it was just inappropriate to say what I was really thinking I would say. And I held back, I think for- I think for a good reason, I think for a good reason. I much rather have it be on policy. And I didnt like getting into the-- into the gutter and so I did hold back."

In advance of Sundays debate, Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway said on "Good Morning America" today that Trump has been watching tapes of his last matchup with Clinton as part of his debate prep.

"Well, he learned from those tapes that he was trying to answer the questions as they were asked. Mrs. Clinton was there really trying to get out the five or six zingers she had rehearsed for a number of days. So this time, I think that Donald Trump, in a town hall format, it's one he's very comfortable," she said.

Other aides tell ABC News that the format will allow Trump to visually focus on the audience rather than home in on Clinton and constantly feel the need to have the last word.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie who, as a presidential candidate, was known for his virtual omnipresence at New Hampshire town halls has been increasingly involved in Trump's debate practice and was present at Thursdays town hall.

"Gov. Christie is helpful because he's done more than 130 town halls," said Conway.

After the debate with Clinton, several senior Trump staffers were frustrated with his inability to execute on the debate stage. One of them told ABC News that Trump "lost his nerve." Preparation for this debate has included rounds of rapid-fire questions and attempts to utilize more one-line attacks.

But tonight, when Trump said this was not debate prep, he seemed to be right. Supporters were pre-selected and virtually all were Trump supporters who asked friendly questions.

Watch FULL LIVE COVERAGE of the second presidential debate, co-moderated by ABC News Martha Raddatz, at 9 p.m. ET on Sunday, Sept. 9. Coverage and analysis of the debate will begin on ABCNews.com/Live at 7 p.m. ET.

ABC News' John Santucci contributed to this report.

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Donald Trump Prepares for Second Debate With Test Run

Every year they audit me, audit me, audit me, an exasperated Donald Trump said at a primary debate in February. His personal federal income taxes, he claimed, had been audited by the Internal Revenue Service for more than a decade.

But the cause for his chagrin also offered Trump an escape hatch. He said he would not publicly release his returns until the audit was complete.

I cant do it until the audit is finished, obviously. And I think people would understand that, he said.

Its a position Trump has clung to formonths. But what is there to understand exactly?

There is no law prohibiting someone from making his own tax information public (audit or no audit), nor one compelling presidential candidates to release them. Yet every major party presidential candidate has since 1976.

Trumps refusal to release his returns may buck precedent, but his non-disclosure goes even further. Trump wont provide proof hes actually under audit.

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A CBS News poll finds 59 percent of voters say Hillary Clinton has the right temperament to be president, and 63 percent say she is prepared for ...

Taxpayers under audit receive a phone call or letter from the Internal Revenue Service informing them their returns are under review. Anyone notified by phone also receives the letter that says in part, Your federal income tax return for the year shown above has been selected for examination. We examine tax returns to verify the correctness of income, deductions, exemptions, and credits.Heres asamplefrom the IRS website.

Some filers are asked foradditionalfinancial documents like canceled checks or receipts. The IRS uses examination and audit interchangeably.

Trumps tax return could reveal unflattering information for someone who has built a reputation and presidential run heralding his extreme wealth. It would show his annual income, tax rate, and how much he gives to charity.

But the IRS notification letter is a different story -- itwould not likely do anypolitical damage to Trumps candidacy. Theform merely contains the taxpayers name, address, social security number (which could be redacted) and a generic reason for the audit.

Four emails to Trumps campaign seeking thisIRS letter yielded no reply. In response to another inquiry, spokeswoman Hope Hicks pointed to anotherletter- one written by Sheri Dillon and William Nelson, tax attorneys representing Trump.

Dillon and Nelson wrote Trumps inordinately large and complex returns have been under continuous examination by the IRS since 2002. The returns from 2002-2008 had been closed administratively, but the examination, they wrote, from 2009 year and forward are ongoing.

It does not specify which years returns after 2009 are being examined.

The letter also said entries in the 2002-2008 returns --even though those audits are closed --could impact the returns currently under an open examination. This likely means that Trump has so-called carry-forwards from those years that could affect his tax liability in 2009 and beyond. The New York Times over the weekend revealed that Trumps personal tax returnsdeclared a loss of $916 million in incomein 1995, and that massive loss could be carried forward to lower or cancel out his income taxes for 18 years.

Trump told the Washington Post in May he would not release any returns from 2002 on regardless of audit status - because theyre all linked.

While theres no reason to doubt the veracity of his attorneys letter, Dillon and Nelson did not respond to an emailed inquiry (nor provide any IRS documentation).

Their letter, dated March 7, 2016, does not specify if Trumps 2015 returns are under audit. It is unlikely that his 2015 return would have been filed by early March, according to a tax expert, and even less likely that the IRS would have notified Trump of an audit by then.

Wednesday on CNN, Jason Miller, a communications advisor to Trump, was asked if he could produce the audit letter.

Mr. Trump has made very clear that hes under audit, and those paperworks (sic) will go back to the lawyers and the accountants--, Miller said before trailing off.

Well, were taking him at his word. Is there -- can you produce some evidence that he is, in fact, being audited? anchor Alisyn Camerota asked.

Miller replied: Well, Ill leave that to the lawyers and the accountants as far as what exactly is public and what exactly is private.

Last month, IRS commissioner John Koskinen appeared before the House Judiciary Committee.

Theres no restriction by the IRS, Koskinen testified, after being asked if there is any law that prevents a person from publicly disclosing an IRS audit notification.

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Is Donald Trump actually under audit? - CBS News

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump suggested during a speech today in Arizona that Bill Clinton went through "hell" on "many nights" with his wife, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

Trump did not elaborate on his remarks, but they came right after he mentioned that the former president called "Obamacare" the "craziest thing" during a speech in Flint, Michigan, on Monday.

"At least he is honest ... In the meantime, she wants to double down on 'Obamacare.' I'll bet he went through hell last night. Can you imagine?" said Trump, who was campaigning in Prescott Valley, Arizona, on Tuesday.

"He went through hell, but you know, honestly, there have been many nights when he has gone through hell with Hillary, in all fairness."

On Monday, Bill Clinton decried the rise of insurance premiums under the Affordable Care Act remarks that Trump and his surrogates have seized on and that Hillary Clinton's team said were taken out of context.

"You've got this crazy system where all of a sudden 25 million more people have health care and then the people are out there, busting it sometimes 60 hours a week, wind up with their premiums doubled and their coverage cut in half," said Bill Clinton. "It's the craziest thing in the world."

Trump quoted Clinton's comments for the crowd Tuesday.

In response to Clinton's comments, the White House came to the defense of the program this afternoon, with press secretary Josh Earnest saying that President Barack Obama is "quite proud of the accomplishment" of the legislation but added the caveat that Obama acknowledges "there are some things that could be done to further strengthen the law."

Earnest added that "of course" the administration wishes Clinton hadn't used those words to describe Obama's signature health care plan.

"It's not exactly clear to me what argument he was making, and so I'll let him and his team explain that," Earnest said.

ABC's Arlette Saenz contributed reporting.

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Donald Trump Says Bill Clinton Went Through 'Hell' With ...

Awake at 3 a.m. ET, Donald Trump picked up his phone and began tweeting about "made up lies" in the media.

Just two hours later, he opened up Twitter again and quickly went from venting to slandering a former beauty queen -- shaming her for a sex tape for which the campaign has not provided evidence.

Trump's conduct since the first debate has been astonishing for a major party nominee just 39 days away from the election. Instead of zeroing in on his strongest points from Monday night on jobs and trade, he's cited fake polls, resurfaced Bill Clinton's marital scandals from the 1990s, floated a conspiracy theory about Google searches and attacked 1996's Miss Universe.

And after Hillary Clinton raised allegations that Trump called 1996 Miss Universe Alicia Machado "Miss Piggy" and "Miss Housekeeping," Trump has kept that controversy alive by refusing to apologize, instead seeking to discredit Machado and justify his apparent comments and similar ones he made in interviews at the time.

The overnight tweeting spree once again brought into focus Trump's apparent unwillingness or inability to back away from a fight, regardless of who is attacking him. It's a habit that serves to keep the attention away from his core campaign message and also emphasizes Clinton's argument that Trump lacks the temperament to be president.

"By the way, who gets up at three o'clock in the morning to engage in a Twitter attack against the former Miss Universe?" Clinton asked supporters in Coral Springs, Florida. "I mean, he hurled as many insults as he could, really. Why does he do things like that?"

She added that the late-night rant was "unhinged" and proved he is "temperamentally unfit" for the Oval Office, a line of attack she's used before.

Trump defended himself via Twitter Friday afternoon.

"For those few people knocking me for tweeting at three o'clock in the morning, at least you know I will be there, awake, to answer the call!" he tweeted.

"It's one way you communicate whereas you know two years ago, five years ago, 20 years ago you wouldn't have this, but now it's a modern day way of communicating," he said Friday. "I find it very effective."

Asked Friday by CNN's Jake Tapper why Trump's phone hasn't been taken away from him, campaign surrogate Sarah Huckabee Sanders replied, "I don't think we're -- anybody's taking anybody's phone away."

Clinton called Machado Friday on her drive from her first event in Florida to the airport in Vero Beach, according to Nick Merrill, Clinton's spokesman. The call lasted around five minutes.

Clinton started by thanking Machado for all she has done and for the courage she has shown, Merrill said. Machado responded by saying that she supported Clinton for a long time and she will continue to support Clinton and I will continue to stand up to Trump.

Even as his top advisers urged him to abandon his feud with the Khans, Trump escalated it, suggesting Ghazala Khan, the mother, stood silently alongside her husband at the Democratic National Convention because she was subservient to her husband and comparing his own sacrifices to the family's loss of their son.

Kellyanne Conway, the billionaire's campaign manager, said Thursday on "The View" that she reprimanded Trump for his comments on "Fox and Friends."

And Trump supporter Kayleigh McEnany, a CNN political commentator, rebuked Trump Friday morning for his overnight tweeting, saying, "I don't think Donald Trump needs to be doing that."

The controversy started when Clinton brought up Trump's comments and treatment of Machado at Monday's presidential debate. The next morning, Trump doubled down.

"You know, she gained a massive amount of weight (after winning Miss Universe) and it was a real problem. We had a real problem," Trump said on "Fox and Friends" the morning after the debate.

He defended himself similarly in an interview the next day with Fox News' Bill O'Reilly.

As Machado did the media rounds and the Clinton campaign continued to attack Trump over his treatment of Machado, Trump apparently couldn't shake the hits. And that's when he pulled up Twitter in the wee hours of Friday morning, and began firing off.

"Wow, Crooked Hillary was duped and used by my worst Miss U. Hillary floated her as an 'angel' without checking her past, which is terrible!" he tweeted.

"Using Alicia M in the debate as a paragon of virture just shows taht Crooked Hillary suffers from BAD JUDGEMENT! Hillary was set up by a con," he continued at 5:19 a.m.

And finally, "Did Crooked Hillary help disgusting (check out sex tape and past) Alicia M become a U.S. citizen so she could use her in debate?"

Machado's past has come under intense scrutiny in recent days, including accusations from Trump's surrogates that she drove a getaway car from a murder scene in Venezuela in 1998, to which Machado replied on CNN this week that "I have my past" and that she is "no saint girl."

"He can say whatever he wants to say. I don't care. You know, I have my past, of course everybody has a past. And I'm no saint girl," Machado told CNN's Anderson Cooper Tuesday on "AC360." "But that is not the point now ... (Trump) was really rude with me, he tried to destroy my self esteem. And now I'm a voice in the Latin community. I'm in a great moment in my life and I have a very clear life. And I can show my taxes."

Machado has also appeared in a reality TV show in which she appears to engage in a sex act under the covers with another contestant -- which some tabloids and conservative outlets have pointed to as evidence of a sex tape.

Supporters of the Republican nominee have argued since Trump's roller coaster month of August that he has evolved as a candidate: he shook up his campaign leadership and has faithfully stuck to delivering rally speeches from a teleprompter, minimizing the number of controversies he can stoke.

But late at night, with his campaign staff far from his side, Trump was free to follow his gut. And his gut told him to punch back at a former Miss Universe whom he allegedly once called "Miss Piggy" after she gained weight by calling her disgusting for starring in a sex tape.

And so that's what he did.

CNN's Dan Merica contributed to this report.

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