Three days after President Trump announced his “Full and Complete Endorsement” of Louisiana congressional candidate Blake Miguez, the Republican candidate posted. video from outside the West Wing boasting of his close relationship with Trump and his team. “I’m done having good meetings with the White House,” he told his followers on February 7.
What he didn’t say — publicly or to Trump’s advisers at the time — was that there were political explosions about to go down in his campaign for Louisiana’s Fifth Congressional District. Months before that, when Miguez was running for the United States Senate, a 2007 police report was released that showed Miguez’s ex-boyfriend accused her of rape and other bad behavior, including locking her in rooms, taking her keys, and holding her down. Miguez’s campaign denies the allegations.
In the report I found, the woman told the police how Miguez made love to her even though she said no, then followed him when he ran away from home. He told police he hid behind a car near a convenience store until a friend joined him, then called 911. An officer took him to the hospital for a rape-paraphernalia evaluation, the report said. Miguez, then 25 years old, was detained and questioned. After the woman, then 22, told detectives she didn’t want to press charges, no one was charged. “I called 911 because I was/are really scared!” he 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 harassment and was found guilty of sexual harassment in a New York civil case. The president has denied any wrongdoing. Two people familiar with the White House approval process told me that Trump’s top advisers were not informed of the police report or the alleged rape before the president approved it. That has raised concerns that Miguez was either not fully investigated or did not come forward with potentially discoverable documents from the 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 been used to try to undermine her credibility.
“It’s been widely discussed among the political crowd that there was a big bombshell,” one Republican working in the state told me of the rumor. “No one knew what it was.”
Club for Growth, a conservative group that is participating in Republican primaries for safe House seats, endorsed Miguez the day before the president and continues to support him. A spokesman for the group, Joe Kildea, declined to say whether officials knew about the rape allegations before his approval and told me the group was aware of what he called “false allegations made 20 years ago” and did not find them credible.
The White House press office declined to comment.
Miguez, fierce champion and former reality show contestanthas served in the Louisiana legislature since 2015, most recently as a state senator. He launched a campaign last year against Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, who angered Trump by voting to impeach him in 2021. After Trump decided earlier this year to endorse Rep. Julia Letlow in the primary, Miguez decided to run for Letlow’s congressional seat, a rural area that is close to the Mississippi border. Miguez has lived a long time.
The Miguez campaign directed me to a Feb. 24 email the accuser’s father sent to Miguez’s Senate office after he contacted an Associated Press reporter asking about the allegations. The father told Miguez he could share the email, the campaign told me.
“The only thing I told her was that you are a good person and you have my vote and everything my daughter has reported about you is a lie and she is a liar and has a drug problem,” the accuser’s father wrote. “I’m not sure why they dig up this crap but I wanted to remind you.” The email did not refute any of the details in the police report, which the father claimed he refused to read when the reporter gave it to him. (I was unable to reach the accuser, who I am not naming, or his family.)
A campaign spokesman declined to answer my questions about when Miguez learned the police report was being circulated or whether he told the White House or the Progressive Club about its contents. “We would direct you to an email from the woman’s father,” the campaign responded in an unsigned statement.
Three days after the email from the accuser’s father was sent, Matthew Foldi, a former Republican candidate for the US Congress, posted. article in his pamphlet described the discovery of the 2007 police report as a “Kavanaugh-esque smear,” referring to the sexual assault charges that Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh faced during his trial. (Kavanaugh denied wrongdoing and was vindicated.) Foldi wrote that Miguez’s campaign told him, “They know they can’t beat Blake with the truth, so they’re trying to destroy him with lies.” The Associated Press has yet to publish an article about the allegations.
Foldi also shook his head about the accuser’s interactions with law enforcement in the years since his relationship with Miguez. She filed for protective orders against another boyfriend in 2008 and 2011, alleging domestic violence. In 2012, she claimed abuse by her third boyfriend, who told police she was addicted to pills and had recently been laid up. In 2014, he was booked for trespassing and later charged with a felony. He pleaded not guilty, and the case was later dismissed. In 2023, she was arrested for child escape, according to a local news report. The case was never charged or prosecuted, according to court records. Last year, he was arrested when methamphetamine and marijuana were found in the car he was traveling in, and has pleaded not guilty to the charges. (I have reviewed copies of the legal documents related to all of these payments.)
Club for Growth referred to the woman’s troubled history in their statement to me and accused her of a “long record of false allegations” and making similar allegations against other men. The documents I reviewed show no evidence of fabrication on her part and did not include other allegations of rape. Kildea did not respond to my follow-up questions asking for evidence.
Despite Trump’s endorsement, the Republican primary in Louisiana’s Fifth District, where Trump won 67 percent of the vote in 2024, remains contested. Other Republican candidates include Michael Echols, state representative; State Senator Rick Edmond, pastor at Speaker Mike Johnson’s church; and Misti Cordell, member of the State Board of Regents. The primary match is May 16.
