The episode, starring veteran actor Gary Cole, centred on a wealthy businessman whose bid for public office is rocked by sexual harassment claims from several women.

According to Ice-T, the show's US network NBC - which still pays Trump as a series producer on Celebrity Apprentice - got cold feet when real-life began veering a little too close to fiction.

"I think NBC just said, 'You know what? This might be cheesy or corny'... So I think they just got rid of it," the actor told Vanity Fair.

"I don't know if they burned the s???t or whatever. I don't give a f???k, really. I got my money."

Originally meant to premiere last October, the episode was briskly rescheduled to November following Trump's "locker room talk" revelations and sexual misconduct allegations. The episode was then pulled again in the wake of his surprise election win.

Since then, it's been floating in TV's no man's land, with series creator Dick Wolf admitting in January that he didn't know when the episode - which was originally written nine months prior - would air.

"They were like, 'Oh shit!'... Because Law & Order wants to be close, but not too close," Ice-T said about the show's "ripped from the headlines" proclivities.

"Also, I think [Cole] channelled Trump. Even though this guy he played wasn't Trump, he acted like Trump."

The actor, who's played Detective Fin Tutuola on the show for 17 seasons, also shared new details on the episode's plot - including his own brusque assessment.

"There was this guy who was running for president - he was very Trump-ish and girls were coming out of the woodwork saying he was raping them. And me and Mariska [Hargitay, who plays Lieutenant Olivia Benson], we're on his bumper and he's sweating it," he explained.

"But at the end of the day, it comes out that he was innocent. He didn't do it. So we've got to apologise and he's still doing his thing, talking his s???t. And it turns out that his campaign advisor, who was his best friend, was booby-trapping him because he knew he would be terrible for America!

"I don't think it's even worth showing. It wasn't one of our best," he added.