Three days after President Trump introduced his “Full and Complete Endorsement” of the Louisiana congressional candidate Blake Miguez, the Republican contender posted a video from outdoors the West Wing boasting of his shut relationship with Trump and his crew. “I simply obtained achieved having some nice conferences with the White Home,” he instructed his supporters on February 7.
What he didn’t say—both publicly or to Trump’s advisers on the time—was that there was a political bombshell about to drop on his marketing campaign for Louisiana’s deep-red Fifth Congressional District. Months earlier, when Miguez was working for the U.S. Senate, a 2007 police report had surfaced that confirmed that Miguez’s former girlfriend had accused him of rape and different abusive habits, together with locking her in bedrooms, taking away her keys, and holding her down. The Miguez marketing campaign denies the claims.
Within the report, which I obtained, the lady described to police how Miguez had intercourse along with her though she instructed him no, after which adopted her when she fled the house. She instructed police that she’d hidden behind a automotive close to a comfort retailer till a buddy may be a part of her, then known as 911. An officer took her to a hospital for a rape-kit examination, the report said. Miguez, who was then 25 years previous, was detained and questioned. After the lady, then 22, instructed a detective that she didn’t need to press prices, none have been filed. “I known as 911 trigger I truthfully was/am scared!” she wrote in a voluntary assertion to the police.
The police report has put the president in a troublesome place, as a result of Trump has been repeatedly accused of sexual assault and was discovered chargeable for sexual abuse in a New York civil trial. The president has denied any wrongdoing. Two folks conversant in the White Home endorsement course of instructed me that Trump’s prime advisers weren’t knowledgeable of the police report or the rape accusation earlier than the president endorsed. That has raised considerations that Miguez both wasn’t totally vetted or wasn’t forthcoming about discoverable paperwork from his previous. The report has been circulating in Louisiana for months, in response to folks conversant in the trouble to uncover it, and final fall, a personal investigator requested public information associated to the lady which have since been used to attempt to undermine her credibility.
“It has been broadly mentioned amongst the political crowd that there was a large bomb,” one Republican who works within the state instructed me concerning the rumors. “No one knew what it was.”
The Membership for Development, a conservative group that’s concerned in Republican primaries in protected Home seats, endorsed Miguez a day sooner than the president and continues to help him. A spokesperson for the group, Joe Kildea, declined to say whether or not officers knew concerning the rape allegation forward of its endorsement and instructed me that the group was conscious of what he known as “false accusations made 20 years in the past” and doesn’t discover them credible.
The White Home press workplace declined to remark.
Miguez, a champion sharpshooter and a former reality-show contestanthas served within the Louisiana legislature since 2015, most just lately as a state senator. He introduced a marketing campaign final 12 months to problem Louisiana Senator Invoice Cassidy, who earned Trump’s ire by voting to convict him for impeachment in 2021. After Trump determined earlier this 12 months to endorse Consultant Julia Letlow in that major, Miguez pivoted to run for Letlow’s open congressional seat, a rural expanse that wraps the state’s border with Mississippi, which is about 40 miles from the parish the place Miguez has lengthy lived.
The Miguez marketing campaign pointed me to a February 24 electronic mail that the accuser’s father despatched to Miguez’s state-Senate workplace after he was contacted by an Related Press reporter asking concerning the accusations. The daddy instructed Miguez he may share the e-mail, the marketing campaign instructed me.
“The one factor I instructed him have been that you’re a good man and you’ve got my vote and every part my daughter has reported about you have been lies and he or she is a liar and has a drug drawback,” the accuser’s father wrote. “Undecided why they’re digging up this crap however I wished to provide you a heads up.” The e-mail didn’t refute any of the specifics within the police report, which the daddy claimed that he’d refused to learn when the reporter supplied it to him. (I used to be unable to succeed in the accuser, whom I’m not naming, or her household.)
A marketing campaign spokesperson declined to reply my questions on when Miguez had discovered that the police report was circulating or whether or not he’d instructed the White Home or the Membership for Development about its contents. “We might refer you to an electronic mail from the lady’s personal father,” the marketing campaign responded in an unsigned assertion.
Three days after the e-mail from the accuser’s father was despatched, Matthew Foldi, a former Republican candidate for the U.S. Home, revealed an article on his Substack that described the unearthing of the 2007 police report as a “Kavanaugh-esque smear,” a reference to the accusations of sexual assault that Supreme Courtroom Justice Brett Kavanaugh confronted throughout his affirmation hearings. (Kavanaugh denied wrongdoing and was confirmed.) Foldi wrote that the Miguez marketing campaign instructed him, “They know they will’t beat Blake with the reality, in order that they’re attempting to destroy him with lies.” The Related Press has but to publish an article concerning the accusations.
Foldi additionally nodded to details about the accuser’s interactions with legislation enforcement within the years since her relationship with Miguez. She sought protecting orders in opposition to one other boyfriend in 2008 and 2011, alleging home violence. In 2012, she alleged abuse by a 3rd boyfriend, who instructed police that she was hooked on capsules and had just lately been in rehab. In 2014, she was booked for unauthorized entry right into a residence and later charged with a felony. She pleaded not responsible, and the case was later dropped. In 2023, she was arrested for youngster desertion, in response to an area information report. The case was not charged or prosecuted, in response to court docket information. Final 12 months, she was arrested when methamphetamine and marijuana have been discovered within the automotive she was touring in, and he or she has pleaded not responsible to the ensuing prices. (I’ve reviewed copies of authorized paperwork associated to all of those prices.)
The Membership for Development referenced the lady’s troubled historical past of their assertion to me and accused her of a “lengthy document of fabricated claims” and of creating related allegations in opposition to different males. The paperwork that I reviewed don’t present proof of fabrication on her half and didn’t embody different rape accusations. Kildea didn’t reply my follow-up questions asking for proof.
Regardless of Trump’s endorsement, the Republican major for Lousiaians’s Fifth District, the place Trump gained 67 p.c of the vote in 2024, stays contested. Different Republican candidates embody Michael Echols, a state consultant; State Senator Rick Edmond, a pastor at Speaker Mike Johnson’s church; and Misti Cordell, a member of the state Board of Regents. The first is on Might 16.
