'Political bombshell' engulfs Trump-endorsed Republican as rape allegation emerges

A Republican candidate whom President Donald Trump endorsed for the heavily Republican 5th Congressional District of Louisiana has a problematic past, reported The Atlantic on Wednesday evening.

At the start of February, Trump posted he is giving his “Complete and Total Endorsement” to Blake Miguez for that race, which prompted Miguez to shoot a video of himself from the White House, touting his close relationship with the president.

"What he did not say — either publicly or to Trump’s advisers at the time — was that there was a political bombshell about to drop on his campaign for Louisiana’s deep-red Fifth Congressional District," said the report. "Months earlier, when Miguez was running for the U.S. Senate, a 2007 police report had surfaced that showed that Miguez’s former girlfriend had accused him of rape and other abusive behavior, including locking her in bedrooms, taking away her keys, and holding her down."

The police report, obtained by The Atlantic's Michael Scherer, indicates how the victim "described to police how Miguez had sex with her even though she told him no, and then followed her when she fled the home. She told police that she’d hidden behind a car near a convenience store until a friend could join her, then called 911. An officer took her to a hospital for a rape-kit examination, the report stated. Miguez, who was then 25 years old, was detained and questioned. After the woman, then 22, told a detective that she did not want to press charges, none were filed. 'I called 911 cause I honestly was/am scared!' she wrote in a voluntary statement to the police."

Miguez's campaign denies all of the allegations. However, per the report, the new revelation "has raised concerns that Miguez either wasn’t fully vetted or wasn’t forthcoming about discoverable documents from his past."

Trump himself has been accused of sexual misconduct by dozens of women, including one who won millions in a defamation suit against him, and another who claimed, as part of the investigation into the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking case files, that Trump had sexual contact with her when she was 13. He has repeatedly denied all wrongdoing.

This comes as the Trump-endorsed pick for Senate in North Carolina, Michael Whatley, was found to have elevated a convicted child sex offender to an important role in the state GOP.