What he did not say—either publicly or to Trump’s advisers at the time—was that there was a political bombshell about to drop on his campaign for Louisiana’s deep-red Fifth Congressional District. Months earlier, when Miguez was running for the U.S. Senate, a 2007 police report had surfaced that showed that Miguez’s former girlfriend had accused him of rape and other abusive behavior, including locking her in bedrooms, taking away her keys, and holding her down. The Miguez campaign denies the claims.
In the report, which I obtained, the woman described to police how Miguez had sex with her even though she told him no, and then followed her when she fled the home. She told police that she’d hidden behind a car near a convenience store until a friend could join her, then called 911. An officer took her to a hospital for a rape-kit examination, the report stated. Miguez, who was then 25 years old, was detained and questioned. After the woman, then 22, told a detective that she did not want to press charges, none were filed. “I called 911 cause I honestly was/am scared!” she wrote in a voluntary statement to the police.
The police report has put the president in a difficult position, because Trump has been repeatedly accused of sexual assault and was found liable for sexual abuse in a New York civil trial. The president has denied any wrongdoing. Two people familiar with the White House endorsement process told me that Trump’s top advisers were not informed of the police report or the rape accusation before the president endorsed. That has raised concerns that Miguez either wasn’t fully vetted or wasn’t forthcoming about discoverable documents from his past. The report has been circulating in Louisiana for months, according to people familiar with the effort to uncover it, and last fall, a private investigator requested public records related to the woman that have since been used to try to undermine her credibility.
“It has been widely discussed amongst the political crowd that there was a massive bomb,” one Republican who works in the state told me about the rumors. “Nobody knew what it was.”
The Club for Growth, a conservative group that is involved in Republican primaries in safe House seats, endorsed Miguez a day earlier than the president and continues to support him. A spokesperson for the group, Joe Kildea, declined to say whether officials knew about the rape allegation ahead of its endorsement and told me that the group was aware of what he called “false accusations made 20 years ago” and does not find them credible.
The White House press office declined to comment.....continue at the link