Three days after President Trump introduced his “Full and Whole Endorsement” of the Louisiana congressional candidate Blake Miguez, the Republican contender posted a video from exterior the West Wing boasting of his shut relationship with Trump and his crew. “I simply acquired accomplished having some nice conferences with the White Home,” he informed 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 operating 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 together with her though she informed him no, after which adopted her when she fled the house. She informed police that she’d hidden behind a automotive close to a comfort retailer till a good friend may be 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, informed a detective that she didn’t need to press costs, none have been filed. “I known as 911 trigger I actually was/am scared!” she wrote in a voluntary assertion to the police.
The police report has put the president in a tough place, as a result of Trump has been repeatedly accused of sexual assault and was discovered responsible for sexual abuse in a New York civil trial. The president has denied any wrongdoing. Two folks aware of the White Home endorsement course of informed me that Trump’s high advisers weren’t knowledgeable of the police report or the rape accusation earlier than the president endorsed. That has raised issues 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 accordance with folks aware of the hassle to uncover it, and final fall, a non-public investigator requested public data associated to the lady which have since been used to attempt to undermine her credibility.
“It has been extensively mentioned amongst the political crowd that there was an enormous bomb,” one Republican who works within the state informed me in regards to the rumors. “No one knew what it was.”
The Membership for Development, a conservative group that’s concerned in Republican primaries in secure 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 in regards to the rape allegation forward of its endorsement and informed 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 contestant, has served within the Louisiana legislature since 2015, most lately as a state senator. He introduced a marketing campaign final yr 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 yr 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 e mail that the accuser’s father despatched to Miguez’s state-Senate workplace after he was contacted by an Related Press reporter asking in regards to the accusations. The daddy informed Miguez he may share the e-mail, the marketing campaign informed me.
“The one factor I informed 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 she or he is a liar and has a drug drawback,” the accuser’s father wrote. “Unsure why they’re digging up this crap however I needed to present 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 informed the White Home or the Membership for Development about its contents. “We’d refer you to an e 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, printed 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 informed him, “They know they’ll’t beat Blake with the reality, in order that they’re making an attempt to destroy him with lies.” The Related Press has but to publish an article in regards to the accusations.
Foldi additionally nodded to details about the accuser’s interactions with regulation enforcement within the years since her relationship with Miguez. She sought protecting orders towards one other boyfriend in 2008 and 2011, alleging home violence. In 2012, she alleged abuse by a 3rd boyfriend, who informed police that she was hooked on capsules and had 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 baby desertion, in accordance with an area information report. The case was not charged or prosecuted, in accordance with court docket data. Final yr, she was arrested when methamphetamine and marijuana have been discovered within the automotive she was touring in, and she or he has pleaded not responsible to the ensuing costs. (I’ve reviewed copies of authorized paperwork associated to all of those costs.)
The Membership for Development referenced the lady’s troubled historical past of their assertion to me and accused her of a “lengthy file of fabricated claims” and of constructing comparable allegations towards different males. The paperwork that I reviewed don’t present proof of fabrication on her half and didn’t embrace 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 % of the vote in 2024, stays contested. Different Republican candidates embrace 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.
