Former Trump staffer’s texts revealed in ‘bombshell’ filing
A thread of text messages that are allegedly between two past aides of former President Donald Trump was released Thursday as part of a lawsuit brought by one of those past staffers, lawyer A.J. Delgado.
The Daily Beast reported that Delgado claims the thread of “bombshell text messages,” was between her and Jenna Ellis, who is also a lawyer and is a co-defendant in the Georgia election subversion case against Trump. Last summer, Audacy reported that Ellis – who was accused of making false statements at a press conference, soliciting and more – was seeking donations via a Christian fundraising website to pay for her legal fees.
“The alleged texts begin with Delgado asking if Ellis knew of anyone who ‘complained of gender discrimination, pregnancy discrimination, or sexual harassment’ during Trump’s 2020 campaign,” said the Daily Beast. ‘She wrote that the messages were to remain between them and pleaded with her to ‘tell me the truth.’”
Delgado had submitted the texts before, but the Trump campaign’s lawyers asked her to re-submit them without names redacted, the Daily Beast said.
According to a 2017 article in the Atlantic, Delgado was once a prominent spokesperson for Trump. It said that few worked harder than her to get the well-known real estate mogul elected in 2016, besides fellow staffer Jason Miller.
“They had become key figures in his campaign, and that night they both looked poised to join the ranks of America’s most powerful politicos,” said the outlet of Delgado and Miller. “They were also engaged in a romance that had been forged in the frenetic final weeks of the race,” although Miller was married.
CBS News reported in 2019 that Delgado filed a lawsuit claiming that she was stripped of her responsibilities and frozen out of a White House job after she got pregnant from her affair with Miller. In that suit, she also said she faced alleged discrimination from Stephen Bannon, Sean Spicer and Reince Priebus.
“The lawsuit alleges that after Delgado told Miller about her pregnancy, he said that she could not be seen, ‘waddling around the White House pregnant,’” said the report. Per the Daily Beast, Delgado alleges that Miller her former supervisor, raped her.
Its report said that the text messages name someone named “Boris,” potentially referring to Boris Epshteyn. He’s “an analyst for Trump’s 2020 campaign who’s remained a trusted ear for Trump to this day,” said the Daily Beast.
The texter who Delgado claims is Ellis responded to Delgado’s question regarding discrimination or sexual harassment complaints with this: “Yes.
Off the record – Boris. The campaign settled multiple suits.”
“The second number [allegedly Ellis] added that Delgado should subpoena the ex-Trump campaign staffer Michael Glassner, and assured Delgado that she would ‘of course’ tell the truth even though they ‘may not agree on everything,’” the Daily Beast reported.
However, the outlet said it had not independently verified the authenticity of the texts. It contacted Ellis, Delgado and a Trump representative but they had not responded to emailed questions as of the time the article was published.
It also said that Epshteyn, now 41, was accused of repeatedly groping two sisters at an Arizona bar in 2021 until a bouncer and cops intervened to remove him. Though he faced sexual misconduct counts, they were later dropped and he instead pleaded guilty to a disorderly conduct charge.
Furthermore, the Daily Beast said Epshteyn “pleaded not guilty last month in Arizona to nine felony charges related to the last presidential election, and has reportedly had at least $90,000 worth of his lawyer fees paid for by Trump’s PAC, Save America.”
Last August, Audacy reported that an in indictment against former Trump, the U.S. Department of Justice alludes to but does not name six co-conspirators who allegedly aided him in efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. At the time, The New York Times published a report that indicated Epshteyn could be one of them.
“An email from December 2020 from Boris Epshteyn, a strategic adviser to the Trump campaign in 2020, to Mr. Giuliani matches a description in the indictment of an interaction between Co-Conspirator 6 and Mr. Giuliani, whose lawyer has confirmed that he is Co-Conspirator 1,” said the report.
