Former Trump Staffer Shares Texts Revealing Secret Payoffs

A.J. Delgado, a former staffer on Trump’s 2016 campaign, shared bombshell texts alleging that the campaign “settled multiple” gender discrimination and sexual harassment lawsuits. The texts, reportedly between Delgado and former Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis, came to light in new filings Delgado made as part of her ongoing discrimination lawsuit.

“Jenna, [between] us, do you know of anyone who complained of gender discrimination, pregnancy discrimination, or sexual harassment, in the 2020 campaign? Do you know if the 2020 campaign settled any lawsuits regarding such?” texts allegedly from Delgado ask. “Yes. Off record—Boris. The campaign settled multiple suits,” a text reply allegedly from Ellis reads. “Have your investigator subpoena Michael Glassner,” the texts advise, apparently referring to the Trump 2020 campaign strategist.

While the “Boris” named in the text exchange isn’t clear, it could be Boris Epshteyn, strategic adviser for Trump’s 2020 campaign. Forbes’s Zach Everson noted while alerting to the filing that Epshteyn was arrested in 2021 following numerous complaints of groping women at a club.

The text exchange follows earlier sworn declarations by Delgado asserting that Trump’s 2016 campaign repeatedly used middlemen to send hush money with the direct intention of obscuring discrimination settlements from the public and from the Federal Election Commission.

“In other words, the payment would be routed through a middleman, to hide the fact that the Campaign had settled, from the public and the FEC,” Delgado stated in her earlier sworn court declaration. “I thus have direct, personal experience with the Defendant-Campaign hiding settlement payments to women, routing them through a ‘middleman law firm,’ which to the public would only appear as payments ‘for legal services.’” Immediately following the November 2020 election, the Trump campaign paid $4.1 million for legal services, according to The Daily Beast, alongside “millions in mysterious legal reimbursements to the campaign’s compliance firm, Red Curve Solutions.”

Delgado alleged in a 2023 lawsuit that she was raped by former Trump campaign spokesperson Jason Miller, her superior at the time. Miller denied the rape allegations and brushed off her lawsuit as “simply intended to harass my family while wasting the judiciary’s time and resources.” Delgado’s lawsuit claims Miller first attempted to coerce Delgado into sex in October 2016 by getting her too drunk to consciously consent, after which Miller engaged in a “cycle of sexual coercion, rape, sexual assault, abuse, battery, sexual harassment, and sex trafficking” to continue an affair. Delgado also claims she became pregnant by Miller and that, on informing the campaign she was pregnant, she was cut off from communications with the campaign.

Delgado had earlier alleged to have reason to believe Trump’s campaign paid off women who raised complaints of gender discrimination or sexual harassment, and the text exchange allegedly between Delgado and Ellis filed on Thursday appear to bolster that claim. Jessica Denson sued the Trump campaign for workplace harassment. ProPublica notes four other women have filed similar complaints against the 2016 campaign. Of those, Trump’s legal team used “scorched-earth tactics,” according to ProPublica, to prevent the discrimination lawsuits from moving forward.

Frustrated with President Biden and his campaign after last week’s disastrous debate performance, major Democratic donors say they will withhold their campaign contributions unless Biden leaves the race.

The New York Times reports that major donors including Disney heiress Abigail E. Disney, Hollywood producer Damon Lidelof, and politically well-connected donor Gideon Stein all plan to keep their money to themselves until Biden steps aside. 

Disney said that the Biden campaign and the committees supporting it, such as super PACs, the Democratic National Committee, and nonprofits “will not receive another dime from me until they bite the bullet and replace Biden at the top of the ticket.”

“Biden is a good man who has served his country well, but the stakes are far too high to allow timidity to determine our course of action,” Disney added.

“A new ticket is in the best interest of defeating Donald Trump,” said Stein, who said his family would hold back on $3.5 million in political donations unless Biden withdraws from the 2024 contest.

Losing some of the wealthiest campaign contributors is bad news for Biden, and will add to fears brought on by grim poll numbers and open criticism from other Democrats, as well as muted criticism from White House staff. Two sitting members of Congress, Representatives Lloyd Doggett and Raúl Grijalva, have publicly called on Biden to step aside from the 2024 race, while other House members are circulating a draft letter calling for the same. The more support Biden loses, the greater the pressure will be for him to drop out, and bad press against him could hurt his poll numbers even further.

While the Democratic National Convention isn’t until August, the party was planning on holding a virtual call to formally nominate Biden as the Democratic presidential nominee earlier to avoid legal deadlines for ballot access in certain states. Biden and his family have a big choice to make, and soon: Republicans (and Donald Trump) may prefer Biden, but they are already licking their chops against potential replacements.

Two days after Steve Bannon went to prison for defying a congressional subpoena, a guest on his podcast War Room posited an interesting theory for the alt-right conspiracy theorist’s incarceration.

Last week, Oklahoma State Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters mandated that all state public schools would be required to keep a Bible in the classroom and use it for daily instruction, all on the basis that “the founders cited the Bible.” And, according to Walters, a little more Bible-thumping could have spared Bannon from the clink too.

“You know, when you look at an issue like this, what you’ve seen in our schools is the radical left, the teachers union have come in, and they pushed indoctrinating of our kids,” Walters told War Room guest host Ben Harnwell. “And one of the things that they’ve done is they’ve taken the Bible out of schools. They say, ‘Listen, you can’t talk about our rights coming from God.’

“I mean, you see what’s happening to President Trump right now, where they’re arresting him,” he continued. “They’re giving this banana republic nonsense in a courtroom. Look what they’re doing to Steve Bannon right now.”

Walters has spent several interviews across different news outlets defending his decision to institute the Bible’s teachings in Oklahoma classrooms. On CNN, Walters skirted questions about his decision and instead claimed that “Thomas Jefferson advocated for freedom of religion, actually, not the establishment of a religion.”

He further insisted on Bannon’s podcast that he was “very proud” that Oklahoma would be the first state in the nation to “put the Bible back in.”

“The Bible is a necessary historical document to teach our kids about the history of this country, to have a complete understanding of Western civilization, to have an understanding of the basis of our legal system,” Walters said, during the state school board meeting when he unveiled the new rule. “It is one of the most foundational documents used for the Constitution.

The Sooner State directive was basically inspired by a similar school policy in Louisiana, requiring public schools to display a copy of the Ten Commandments in every classroom. But that mandate has already faced its own legal troubles.

Days after it was signed into law by Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry—who told GOP donors that he couldn’t “wait to be sued” over it—the ACLU, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and the Freedom From Religion Foundation, along with the parents of children enrolled in Louisiana public schools, filed a lawsuit against the state, claiming that such an obvious violation of religious freedoms was unconstitutional.

The dean of Arizona’s congressional delegation, Representative Raúl Grijalva, is calling on President Joe Biden to step aside in the 2024 presidential election, following Thursday’s poor debate performance.

“If he’s the candidate, I’m going to support him, but I think that this is an opportunity to look elsewhere,” Grijalva told The New York Times Wednesday, regarding the incumbent president. “What he needs to do is shoulder the responsibility for keeping that seat—and part of that responsibility is to get out of this race.”

Grijalva becomes only the second Democrat in the House to openly call for Biden’s withdrawal, following Representative Lloyd Doggett on Tuesday. Only last week, Grijalva was defending Biden.

This shows that Biden isn’t just in danger of losing Democrats on the fence, or those in swing districts, but even progressives in safe seats. The 10-term Arizona representative has served in Congress since 2003 in a district that voted for Biden by a considerable margin, and once chaired the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Grijalva joins a host of Democrats who have privately expressed their concerns with Biden in recent days, with some even circulating a draft letter calling for Biden to withdraw.

Outside of Congress, Grijalva’s stance also carries considerable weight, as Arizona is a key battleground state. The Grand Canyon State has only been won by Democratic presidential candidates twice since 1948: Bill Clinton in 1996 and a narrow win for Biden in 2020, edging out Donald Trump by close to 10,000 votes. A post-debate internal Democratic poll shows Trump leading in the state by nearly 10 points, which could also have a ripple effect on Democrat Ruben Gallego’s attempt to win the Senate seat being vacated by the departing Kyrsten Sinema.

With pressure coming from an established member of Congress in a key battleground state, Biden has a decision to make. Democrats and Trump opponents will hope that he makes it soon, as conservatives are already strategizing on how to handle potential replacements.

A U.S. district court in Mississippi ruled Tuesday that three state congressional maps crafted in 2022 by the state’s Republican-led legislature violated the Voting Rights Act and dilute the Black vote in three majority-Black districts.

The lawsuit, filed in 2022 by the ACLU on behalf of the Mississippi State Conference of the NAACP, argued that lawmakers redrew voting maps that ”dilute black Mississippian votes in violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and contain 11 unconstitutional racial gerrymanders in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.”

According to the court’s decision, Mississippi lawmakers with the Standing Joint Committee presented and approved finalized maps, with no opportunity for public comment or presenting proposed maps, after holding a brief 15-minute hearing to issue new criteria for drawing legislative maps.

The alterations sparked concern among Mississippi legislators who noted the state’s demographics would require the addition of at least four majority-Black districts. Lawmakers pushing through their diluted maps stated that a voting map that reflects the state’s growing Black population “is not a map this state needs,” and pushed forward a voting map that redrew two majority-Black state Senate districts and one majority-Black state House district in March 2022.

A three-judge panel ruled on Tuesday that the maps did violate the Voting Rights Act but “did not establish the redistricting maps are unconstitutional racial gerrymanders.”

Alongside ruling that the legislative maps would have to be redrawn to comply with the Voting Rights Act, the district court also ruled that special elections would be required for the newly drawn districts.

“This is a win for voting rights,” the ACLU stated on X (formerly Twitter) on announcing the news. “The Mississippi State Conference NAACP is pleased with the decision of finding some of the districts discriminatory to Black voters, although we wish the court had gone further,” said Charles V. Taylor Jr., executive director of Mississippi’s NAACP.

Everybody can breathe a little easier: Mike Flynn is definitely not Donald Trump’s pick for vice president.

X, formerly Twitter, was abuzz Wednesday with rumors that Trump’s disgraced former national security adviser had been officially tapped to join his presidential ticket.

Users were set alight after seeing screenshots of what appeared to be a Federal Election Commission filing registered to Trump and “General Michael Thomas Flynn (Vice President).” The form also referred to a political committee called “Trump-Flynn 2024,” and included the address of a P.O. Box in Arlington, Virginia. The document appeared to be a Form 2, which any candidate must file within 15 days of entering a race.

Many on the internet started to run with the news, fearful that the former president had enlisted the QAnon-pushing conspiracy theorist to help him reclaim the White House. Fortunately for the fate of the free world, the filing was beyond phony.

The original document is not found on the FEC’s website, but on a webpage with a URL ending with upstract.com, which is a news aggregator website. It’s not clear that the website is actually associated with the document. But what is clear is that the whole thing is a moneymaking hoax.

Shortly after posting the screenshot, one user boasted that by posting, they had helped to artificially inflate the betting odds of Flynn’s becoming Trump’s running mate, making a quick buck.

The online fervor still hit a fever pitch, however, and Flynn had to weigh in to put the rumors to rest. “I just saw 2 unauthorized FEC filings referencing my name. They are fake news! I don’t know anything about them, and my office has alerted the FEC,” he wrote on X, before plugging his movie. So there, that settles it.

Earlier Wednesday, Flynn posted his enthusiastic, unconditional endorsement of Trump’s presidential run, asking voters, “Will your children live the American Dream or be enslaved by a corrupt, wasteful government of woke globalists?”

Joe Biden is quickly losing support from Democrats on Capitol Hill, who are urging him to step aside, according to a report from Axios.

These Democrats in Congress are reportedly building a consensus that Biden should withdraw from the race, with one warning that “the dam is breaking.”

“Over the last few hours, I am starting to hear from delegates that they really love Joe but want him to step aside,” another House Democrat said.

One lawmaker said that pressure was building from constituents, who are trying to drive the point home to their congresspeople.

“So many people are telling us he can’t win, he’s got to withdraw,” the representative said, saying that they were being “inundated” with messages from their district.

And one member of Congress suggested that Biden has lost the majority of the Democratic caucus.

Biden should “step down and help lead a transition of candidacy,” this lawmaker told Axios, claiming that a “very large majority of the caucus shares this sentiment.”

The report is grim. Newer House Democrats, many representing swing districts, reportedly told House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries that supporting Biden would mean risking their reputations. Some are even “resigned to the inevitability” that there needs to be someone new, and have come around to Vice President Kamala Harris to replace Biden.

According to Bloomberg, there’s even a draft letter calling for Biden to withdraw that is circulating around the House, with one congressperson saying it’s “all anyone is talking about.” However, there are Democrats who are publicly attempting to build up support for Biden, including some members of the Congressional Black Caucus, as well as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and influential Representative Jim Clyburn, according to the Axios report.

Will Biden be able to shore up enough support from his party to stay on the ticket, or will the pressure prove to be too much? It all depends on whether he in fact has lost the majority of elected Democrats. If he loses the support of party leaders, that could also be enough, especially if polls continue to show alarming trends. Ultimately, Biden will have to decide, and fast, as Republicans are already preparing for potential replacements.

Journalists covering the White House no longer believe that the Biden administration’s press team has the trust of the American people.

In interviews with The Daily Beast, several White House correspondents indicated that a lack of transparency around President Joe Biden’s failing health has compromised any credibility in new messaging.

During a Wednesday briefing, Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre attributed Biden’s poor performance during last week’s debate to jet lag and a cold that would take a “toll” on anybody, including an 81-year-old president. She added that the notes on Biden’s health at the time of the debate should be seen as an “explanation” instead of an “excuse,” and further claimed that the administration had been “transparent” about his condition in the months leading up to the disastrous performance. However, she stopped short of promising the release of more of the president’s health details.

“It doesn’t come across as credible to say that there hasn’t been a change,” Peter Baker, the chief White House correspondent for The New York Times, told the Beast.

“They have told us repeatedly over the last few years, ‘He’s really sharp, he’s as sharp as he ever was,’” Baker continued, adding that “there are moments where he was not always at his sharpest.”

Other reporters were more blunt, mentioning to the Beast that the press team’s credibility was “in already pretty low regard.”

“This is not the first major thing they have not been forthright about,” another White House reporter told the Beast, referring to a communication blunder on debt ceiling negotiations in 2023.

“That credibility has been eroding, but this has kind of been a bit of an iceberg falloff. It’s been sorta happening for a while,” the unidentified reporter added.

In response, White House spokesperson Andrew Bates issued a statement highlighting Biden’s support for a free press with the ability to question his age.

“Joe Biden has always stood up for the ‘critical’ role of the free press in our society and said that it’s legitimate and reasonable for reporters to cover his age,” Bates said. “And we have highlighted that, as he has proven by earning the strongest record of any modern President, Joe Biden is unflinchingly capable and fighting for American families, with sharpness and resolve, every moment of every day.”

Behind closed doors, former President Barack Obama’s tune is more concerning than his public expressions of support would suggest, according to The Washington Post. Obama spoke with Biden on Thursday night after the debate, offering to act as a “sounding board and private counselor.” And privately, he assessed to aides that Biden’s debate performance made his already tough reelection chances harder, according to unnamed sources who spoke with the Post.

Following Biden’s disastrous debate performance last Thursday that continues to shake the Democratic Party, Obama released a statement brushing off the debate performance and pointing to his own abysmal first debate against Mitt Romney in 2012.

Obama’s private rhetoric is in stark contrast to his public statement brushing off Biden’s debate performance as an anomaly. Meanwhile, Biden’s debate has so thoroughly disturbed Democrats that a growing number of Democratic lawmakers and donors seem to be looking for ways to pressure him to step down—a move that the White House and his campaign have firmly rejected.

“President Biden is grateful for President Obama’s unwavering support since the very start of this campaign as both a powerful messenger to voters and a trusted adviser directly to the president,” Lauren Hitt, a spokesperson for Biden’s campaign told The Washington Post.

As with Obama’s private discussions, concerns about Biden’s ability to remain the Democratic nominee have continued to spew forth like leaks in a sinking ship in the days since Biden’s debate. Meanwhile, public calls for Biden to step aside have increased, as have damning polls about Biden’s reelection chances.

Biden’s campaign and the White House remain insistent that he will “absolutely not” drop out, with supporters attempting to shift the narrative by recasting Biden as an underdog duking it out against fascists and bedwetters. According to The New York Times, Biden privately acknowledged his upcoming events this week pose a make-or-break moment to pull his campaign out of its nosedive and convince voters he can survive another term. Meanwhile, conservatives are cooking up a plan to make it “extraordinarily difficult” for Biden to step down and find a replacement on the Democratic ticket.

A poll released by CNN on Tuesday shows 75 percent of voters support anyone else leading the Democratic ticket over Biden, with another CBS poll released on Monday indicating 72 percent of voters doubt Biden’s mental fitness to lead.

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey filed a lawsuit Wednesday against New York state alleging that the gag orders placed on Donald Trump during his hush-money trial constituted election interference. 

The lawsuit alleged that Trump’s gag orders and impending sentencing, which was recently postponed to September, illegally interfered with elections in other states, violated the Purcell principle, and violated the First Amendment rights of the citizens of Missouri “to listen to the campaign speech of a specific individual on specific topics.”

In the filing, lawyers for Missouri argued that the gag orders placed on Trump should be removed, “so Missourians can participate in the election free from New York’s exercise of coercive power limiting the ability of the Trump campaign.” Bailey has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to weigh in on the dispute, and remove Trump’s gag order once and for all. 

It seems the specific topic the suit refers to is Trump’s opinions about New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, his staff, and his family members, whom Trump was barred from speaking about during his trial. He repeatedly railed against them online, stirring up a frenzy of right-wing hysteria over the supposedly rigged trial. Ultimately, the jury found Trump guilty of 34 felony counts for falsifying business documents.  

Ahead of his debate against President Joe Biden, the gag order on Trump was partially lifted, allowing him to make comments about witnesses and jurors who deliberated over the case. Merchan kept intact the part of the order that prevents him from publicly speaking about the lawyers and staff of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and their families. Trump is allowed to speak about District Attorney Alvin Bragg.

Trump supporters remain enraged at the limitations. “New York is waging war on American Democracy—and Missouri will not let it stand,” Bailey wrote on X. “I will not sit idly by while Soros-backed prosecutors in New York hold Missouri voters hostage in this presidential election.” 

The Purcell principle is a uniquely open-ended doctrine that comes from the 2006 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Purcell v. Gonzalez, which found that courts could not change election rules in the short period of time just before an election takes place, because it creates confusion among the electorate. Trump’s criminal trial for his hush-money scheme took place in May, six months before the polls open in November—so it’s not exactly clear how the gag order could constitute the kind of last-minute change to election rules prevented by Purcell. 

While the math on this strategy might not quite work out, it’s on par with Bailey’s original plan to oppose Trump’s conviction on the basis that prosecutors had missed the statute of limitations—which of course, wasn’t the case at all. 

Bailey’s suit seeks a stay on Trump’s gag orders so the presumptive Republican nominee can continue to spew whatever attacks he sees fit against anyone he decides is an enemy. “This lawfare is poisonous to American democracy,” Bailey said in a statement. “The American people ought to be able to participate in a presidential election free from New York’s interference. Any gag order and sentence should be stayed until after the election.”

It’s not clear yet whether the highest court in the land will hear Bailey’s case.