A Louisiana Republican congressional candidate backed by Donald Trump was the subject of a 2007 rape allegation that was reported to local authorities the same day as the alleged assault but never revealed to the public or, reportedly, to the president’s team, who became one of the rising stars of the state’s Republican Party.
That has raised concerns within the White House that Blake Miguez “was not fully vetted or forthcoming about discoverable documents from his past” before securing Trump’s endorsement, the Atlantic reported Wednesday, citing two anonymous sources familiar with the endorsement process.
Miguez’s campaign told the Atlantic that he denied allegations from a woman who described him as a “live-in ex-boyfriend” at the time. The allegations did not lead to any formal criminal charges after the accuser said she declined to press charges against Miguez (then in law school) because she did not want to get him in trouble, according to what investigators wrote in a police report obtained by The Guardian through a public records request.
Additionally, Miguez’s campaign responded to The Guardian’s list of questions about the police report by providing a Feb. 24 email sent by the accuser’s father to the state senator’s office, which said: “Everything my daughter has reported about you were lies, you are a liar and you have a drug problem.”
The email does not detail exactly how the author knows his daughter told lies and did not immediately 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 in political circles for months as the 44-year-old Louisiana state senator set his sights on ascending to Congress.
Repeated attempts to contact the accuser were unsuccessful.
There is no indication that he ever retracted the accusations against Miguez.
In late June, the Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Office received a public records request, which turned up the police report containing the 2007 rape allegation. That was six days after Miguez announced his intention to unseat Louisiana’s ranking U.S. senator, Bill Cassidy, another Republican. The request came from an email address linked to a man whose name matched that of a national Republican researcher.
News of the report circulated among government circles and eventually reached media outlets across the political spectrum.
Miguez abandoned his ambitions to challenge Cassidy on February 3 and instead registered to run for a seat representing Louisiana’s 5th congressional district.
That seat is being vacated by Julia Letlow, another Trump-backed Republican, as she prepares her own challenge against Cassidy.
On February 27, conservative Washington DC journalist Matthew Foldi became the first to make public the accusation against Miguez. Foldi focused largely on how the accuser’s own father took Miguez’s side and promised him his “100% support” in the Feb. 24 email, reportedly sent just after he was approached by an Associated Press journalist.
The email, which explained how the author refused to read a copy of the police report when offered by the journalist, said that neither the father nor other close relatives of the accuser would “speak to these people.” Miguez assured: “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 arrest history. That information appears to echo material in a public records request filed by a Baton Rouge private investigation firm in September. The records pertain to misdemeanors and felonies attributed to the accuser, including illicit drug possession, according to documents obtained by The Guardian. Most of the cases were dismissed; two were pending in local criminal court as of Wednesday.
Foldi further suggested that Miguez’s “political opponents” were trying to damage his congressional campaign, especially after he earned Trump’s coveted endorsement.
Foldi also referred to a series of publicly available court records showing that Miguez’s accuser had allegedly been assaulted by previous romantic partners and sought orders of protection against them, and how all of those cases were dropped or dismissed.
All of these matters were reported over several years after she made the allegations against Miguez.
The Guardian does not identify Miguez’s accuser, adhering to an editorial policy that prohibits naming alleged victims of violent crimes without their permission.
Miguez earned the coveted endorsement of Trump and the Club for Growth, an anti-tax group funded by billionaire conservatives that is aligned with the president, in mid-February ahead of the party’s May 16 primary for the surely Republican U.S. House seat he is seeking.
Trump spokespeople did not immediately comment to The Guardian on whether the president maintained his support for Miguez.
When asked the same question, a Club for Growth spokesperson said, “We are aware of the false allegations made 20 years ago and do not find them credible due to the accuser’s long history of false claims and criminal history, including similar dismissed allegations against five other people.”
The spokesman did not say whether Miguez had disclosed the 2007 police report to the club before he endorsed it.
It was Aug. 27, 2007, when Miguez’s accuser told the Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Office that the man she described as her former resident raped her at the end of a night of drinking.
According to her, both she and Miguez returned to their apartment in the Erath community and argued because she had spoken to another man while they were away. She said she eventually went to bed and Miguez raped her.
The report alleges that the woman ran to a nearby store, asked a friend to pick her up and called officers to report Miguez.
Deputies reported that they then “detained” Miguez for questioning and took him to the sheriff’s office, but did not say whether he made any statements there at the time.
Investigators’ report went on to note that the accuser made it clear that she “didn’t want Blake to get in trouble, but she wanted him to understand that he shouldn’t disrespect her like he did.”
The accuser went to a hospital that same night accompanied by her friend and an agent to undergo a rape kit. While at the hospital, the accuser reiterated that she did not want to press charges, investigators reported. He ultimately “refused all medical treatment from the hospital,” according to the report, without providing further details.
Miguez spent more than eight years in the Louisiana House of Representatives before winning election to the state Senate in 2023.
The champion sniper authored a state Senate bill that lowered the age to carry a concealed weapon in Louisiana from 21 to 18. The legislature approved it and Governor Jeff Landry, a staunch Trump ally, 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 stronghold in a state otherwise largely dominated by Republicans.
As mentioned by Louisiana news outlet nola.com, Miguez initially aimed to unseat Cassidy from the US Senate, presenting himself as a defender of Trump’s Maga movement, whose agenda the more centrist incumbent has broken in some cases.
But when Letlow announced a run for Cassidy’s seat with Trump’s endorsement in hand, Miguez dropped out of the U.S. Senate race and registered to run for the seat he was leaving behind.
Trump then quickly endorsed Miguez, saying in a Feb. 4 social media post that the Louisiana politician was a “Maga warrior.”
“HE WON’T LET YOU DOWN!” The president’s endorsement post also said.
The Club for Growth had endorsed Miguez a day earlier, calling him in part “a conservative fighter” and “the perfect candidate” for the 5th Congressional District.
Miguez still lives in Erath, whose boundaries are outside the 5th 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 he has maintained a home in the Fifth Ward for about 26 years. The campaign has also said that 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 the Louisiana state Senate recently introduced a non-legislative resolution that proposes asking Congress to require candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives to live within the districts they wish to represent.
