Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain said Monday he has been “falsely accused” of inappropriate behavior toward two female employees. Cain was responding to a report in POLITICO alleging that two female employees of the National Restaurant Association complained of inappropriate behavior from Cain when he led the organization in the 1990s.

“I have never sexually harassed anyone,” Cain said at the National Press Club on Monday, echoing comments made earlier on Fox News. “While at the restaurant association I was accused of sexual harassment - falsely accused. … it was concluded after thorough investigation that it had no basis.”

Cain said his popularity in the Republican field has led to a bigger “bull’s eye,” but acknowledged he did not know the “source of this witch hunt.”

Cain’s campaign accused the media of launching “unsubstantiated personal attacks on Cain.”

“Since Washington establishment critics haven’t had much luck in attacking Mr. Cain’s ideas to fix a bad economy and create jobs, they are trying to attack him in any way they can,” J.D. Gordon, Cain’s campaign vice president, said Sunday.

“Dredging up thinly sourced allegations stemming from Mr. Cain’s tenure as the Chief Executive Officer at the National Restaurant Association in the 1990s, political trade press are now casting aspersions on his character and spreading rumors that never stood up to the facts,” Gordon said in a statement.

The women, who were not named in the POLITICO story, left the organization after receiving “separation packages that were in the five-figure range,” the newspaper reported.

During his appearance on Fox, Cain said he was not aware of any settlement and that there are no accurate harassment allegations forthcoming.

“If more allegations come, I assure you, people will simply make them up,” Cain said.

On MSNBC Monday, Mark Block, Cain’s chief of staff, said his boss “never sexually harassed anyone, period.”

Block added that he is “not personally aware of any settlement.”

“He [Cain] said emphatically the story is not true. Bring me the facts, bring me my accuser,” Block said of Cain’s response to the story.

During an appearance at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington Monday, Cain dodged a question about the allegations.

“I am going by the ground rules that my hosts have set,” Cain said.

The AEI moderator told the audience they would only take questions related to fiscal policy. Cain is scheduled to appear later in the day at the National Press Club.

POLITICO described the alleged harassment as including “conversations allegedly filled with innuendo or personal questions of a sexually suggestive nature, taking place at hotels during conferences, at other officially sanctioned restaurant association events and at the association’s offices. There were also descriptions of physical gestures that were not overtly sexual but that made women who experienced or witnessed them uncomfortable and that they regarded as improper in a professional relationship.”

When asked by CNN Monday if Cain ever engaged in innuendo with any members of the NRA, he said “no.”

Cain, the former CEO of Godfather’s Pizza, served as head of the NRA from 1996 until 1999. He has risen recently in national and statewide polls, becoming a top tier candidate in the GOP presidential race.

A spokeswoman for the National Restaurant Association responded to the report in a statement Monday.

“The incidents in question relate to personnel matters that allegedly took place nearly fifteen years ago,” Sue Hensley, the NRA’s senior vice president for public affairs, said in a statement. “Consistent with our longstanding policy, we don’t comment on personnel issues relating to current or former employees.”

Jonathan Martin, senior political reporter for POLITICO, told CNN Monday one woman was asked to come to Cain’s hotel room. She complained to an association board member, and was one of the women who subsequently left the organization, Martin said.

Martin said POLITICO gave Cain’s campaign 10 days to respond to the allegations. First, he was told the allegations had been “settled amicably by parties years ago,” he said.

Ken Vogel, a POLITICO reporter and one of the story’s authors, told MSNBC Monday the story stemmed from “a tip,” but that “we are not going into the source of that tip.”

When pressed on specifics, a Cain spokesman told POLITICO the candidate “vaguely recalled” the incidents and referred him to the NRA’s general counsel, Maritn said. However, the organization’s personnel policy prohibits it from commenting, Martin said, and the Cain campaign would not say more.

Martin said he confronted Cain after his appearance Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” A CNN camera captured Cain responding to the series of questions from POLITICO.

“I’m not going to comment about two people that you won’t tell me who they are,” Cain said. “OK. That’s like negotiating.”

Asked several times whether he has ever been accused of harassment. Cain eventually responded, “Have you ever been accused of sexual harassment?”

“He was given the chance to answer a very direct question,” Martin said Monday morning. “… He did not say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to that question.”

POLITICO said it spoke to a roster of former NRA board members, current and past staffers and others familiar with the workings of the trade group during Cain’s tenure. The newspaper reported it also saw documents that described the allegations.

The women complained that Cain’s behavior “made them angry and uncomfortable, and they signed agreements with the restaurant group that gave them financial payouts to leave the association,” POLITICO said.

The newspaper said it confirmed the women’s identities, but said it did not publish their names out of privacy concerns.

Former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania was the first of Cain’s rivals to react Monday, saying he trusts “Herman will come forward and explain his side.”

“When allegations come forward, I think it’s incumbent upon all the candidates to step forward and confront them and tell the truth. And I’m sure Herman will do that,” Santorum said at a campaign event in Garner, Iowa.

The report has also drawn criticism from some conservatives.

“It’s outrageous the way liberals treat a black conservative,” columnist Ann Coulter said on Fox News. “This is another high-tech lynching.” The phrase was first used by now-Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, whose confirmation hearings focused on sexual harassment allegations against him.

Asked about Coulter’s comments, Martin told CNN’s “American Morning” on Monday that people should read the article in POLITICO.

“The story speaks for itself,” he said.

John Avlon, a CNN political contributor and a senior political columnist for Newsweek and The Daily Beast, said Monday that while the comparison to Thomas might be an easy one to make, “these allegations need to be investigated on their own merit.”

The idea that the story represents a plot by the “liberal press” doesn’t have merit, Avlon said. He said it may “smack of opposition research” by another campaign.

But Cain needs to address the allegations, he said.

“You need to deal with the fact these issues are out there and get ahead of the matter and tell people the truth.”