A Louisiana congressional candidate endorsed by Donald Trump was the subject of a 2007 rape accusation that was reported to local law enforcement the same day of the alleged assault – but never disclosed to the public or, reportedly, the president’s team as he became one of the rising stars in the state’s Republican party.
That has raised concerns within the White House that Blake Miguez “either wasn’t fully vetted or wasn’t forthcoming about discoverable documents from his past” before securing Trump’s backing, the Atlantic reported on Wednesday, citing two unnamed sources familiar with the endorsement process.
Miguez’s campaign on Thursday issued a statement denying the allegations by a woman who described him as a “live-in ex boyfriend” at the time, calling her claims categorically false. The claims did not result in any formal criminal charges after the accuser said she refused to press charges against Miguez – then in law school – because she did not want to get him into trouble, according to what investigators wrote in a police report obtained by the Guardian in February through a public records request.
Repeated attempts to contact the accuser were not successful. There is no indication that she ever retracted the allegations against Miguez.
The Miguez campaign’s statement also linked to a Louisiana news outlet that followed up on the Atlantic and the Guardian’s reporting on Wednesday with a story on Thursday quoting family members of the accuser. Those family members portrayed the accuser as having mental health problems and said therefore “they seriously doubt her allegation against Miguez”.
In early March, Miguez’s campaign responded to the Guardian’s list of questions about the police report by providing a 24 February email sent by the accuser’s father to the state senator’s office, which had the sentence: “Everything my daughter has reported about you were lies and she is a liar and has a drug problem.”
The email doesn’t elaborate on precisely how the author knows his daughter told lies, and he didn’t respond to a request for comment. But Miguez’s campaign said in a statement: “The woman’s father gave permission to share this email with you.”
The report documenting the allegation against Miguez has been circulating among political circles for months as the 44-year-old Louisiana state senator set his sights on ascending to Congress.
In late June, the sheriff’s office in Iberia parish received a public records request, which yielded the police report containing the 2007 rape allegation. That was six days after Miguez announced his intent to unseat Louisiana’s senior US senator, Bill Cassidy, another Republican. The request came from an email address linked to a man whose name matched that of a national Republican party researcher.
Word of the report circulated among governmental circles, eventually making its way to news media outlets across the political spectrum.
Miguez dropped his ambitions to challenge Cassidy on 3 February and instead signed up to run for a seat representing Louisiana’s fifth congressional district.
That post is being left vacant by Julia Letlow, another Trump-backed Republican, as she mounts her own challenge against Cassidy.
On 27 February, the conservative Washington DC journalist Matthew Foldi became the first to publicize the allegation against Miguez. Foldi focused in large part on how the accuser’s own father sided with Miguez and pledged his “100% support” to him in the 24 February email, reportedly sent right after he was approached by an Associated Press journalist.
The email – which explained how the author declined to read a copy of the police report when offered it by the journalist – said that neither the father nor other close relatives of the accuser would “speak with these people”. It assured Miguez: “You have my vote” and: “We are there for you.”
Much of Foldi’s story also focused on attacking the accuser’s credibility, recounting her history of arrests. That information appears to echo material from a public records request filed by a Baton Rouge private investigation firm in September. The records pertain to misdemeanor and felony crimes attributed to the accuser, including for illicitly possessing drugs, according to documents obtained by the Guardian. Most of the cases were dismissed; two were pending in a local criminal court as of Wednesday.
Foldi further suggested Miguez’s “political opponents” were trying to damage his congressional campaign, especially after he clinched a coveted endorsement from Trump.
Foldi also referred to a number of publicly available court records that show Miguez’s accuser had allegedly been assaulted by previous romantic partners and filed for protective orders against them – and how all of those cases were either dropped or dismissed.
Those matters all were reported over the course of several years after she made the allegations against Miguez.
The Guardian is not identifying Miguez’s accuser, adhering to a newsroom policy against naming alleged victims of violent crime without their permission.
Miguez secured coveted endorsements from Trump and the Club for Growth, an anti-tax group funded by billionaire conservatives that is aligned with the president, in mid-February before a 16 May party primary for the safely Republican US House seat he is targeting.
Trump spokespeople did not immediately comment to the Guardian on whether the president stood by his endorsement of Miguez.
Asked the same question, a Club for Growth spokesperson said: “We are aware of the false accusations made 20 years ago and do not find them credible because of the accuser’s long record of false claims and criminal history including similar dismissed allegations against five others.”
The spokesperson did not say whether Miguez had disclosed the 2007 police report to the club before it endorsed him.
It was 27 August 2007 when Miguez’s accuser told the Iberia parish sheriff’s office that the man whom she described as her live-in ex raped her at the end of a night of drinking.
As she alleged, both she and Miguez went home to their apartment in the community of Erath and argued about her having spoken to another man while they were out. She said she eventually went to bed, and Miguez raped her.
The report alleged that the woman ran to a nearby convenience store, got a friend to pick her up and called deputies to report Miguez.
Deputies reported that they then “detained” Miguez for questioning and brought him to the sheriff’s office, but they didn’t say whether he made any statements there at the time.
The investigators’ report continued by noting that the accuser made clear she “did not want Blake to get into trouble, but she wanted him to understand that he is not to disrespect her like he did”.
The accuser went to a hospital that same night in the company of her friend as well as a deputy to undergo a rape kit. While at the hospital, the accuser reiterated that she did not wish to press charges, investigators reported. She ultimately “refused any and all medical treatment from the hospital”, the report said, without elaborating.
Miguez went on to spend more than 8 years in Louisiana’s house of Representatives before winning election to the state’s senate in 2023.
The champion sharpshooter authored a state senate bill that lowered the age to carry a concealed weapon in Louisiana from 21 to 18. The legislature passed it, and the governor, staunch Trump ally Jeff Landry, signed it into law.
He also earned headlines for his work on a politically charged Louisiana senate committee that investigated criminal justice reforms in New Orleans, a Democratic bastion in a state otherwise largely dominated by Republicans.
As mentioned by the Louisiana news outlet nola.com, Miguez was initially aiming to unseat Cassidy from the US Senate, pitching himself as a proponent of Trump’s Maga movement, whose agenda the more centrist incumbent has broken with in instances.
But when Letlow announced a run for Cassidy’s seat with Trump’s endorsement in hand, Miguez exited the US Senate contest and registered to run for the post she was leaving behind.
Trump then quickly endorsed Miguez, saying in a 4 February social media post that the Louisiana politico was a “Maga warrior”.
“HE WILL NOT LET YOU DOWN!” the president’s endorsement post also said.
The Club for Growth had endorsed Miguez a day before that, in part calling him “a conservative fighter” and “the perfect candidate” for the fifth congressional district.
Miguez still lives in Erath, whose boundaries are outside the fifth district.
Candidates are not required to reside in a congressional district to run to represent it as long as they live in the same state. Miguez’s campaign says that he has maintained a home in the fifth district for about 26 years. The campaign has also said Miguez has operated a business in Baton Rouge, which is within the district, for more than a decade.
One of Miguez’s Republican colleagues in Louisiana’s state senate recently introduced a non-legislative resolution proposing to ask Congress to require US House candidates to live within the districts they wish to represent.
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