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.
