EXCLUSIVE: Judge Rules Trump's Former Senior Advisor AJ Delgado Can Depose Michael Glassner, His 2016 Deputy Campaign Manager, on October 22

Glassner is a key witness in a lawsuit filed by Delgado. She says she lost a White House job when she told campaign officials she was pregnant by his top aide Jason Miller, who was then married.

AJ Delgado, the Plaintiff in the case of Arlene Delgado v. Trump For President.

As part of her long delayed lawsuit against Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, his former senior advisor Arlene “AJ” Delgado submitted a legal filing in July that indicated his campaign four years later secretly settled a variety of gender discrimination and sexual harassment claims. The filing included a text exchange from a few weeks earlier between Delgado, a lawyer who’s suing the 2016 campaign for pregnancy discrimination, and Trump’s former legal adviser Jenna Ellis:

To which Ellis replied:

Delgado’s lawsuit alleges that in late-2016, campaign officials terminated her role as an advisor and she lost an anticipated job offer in the Trump White House after she reported internally that she was pregnant by the campaign’s chief spokesman, Jason Miller, who was married at the time. After initially agreeing to privately settle her complaint on undisclosed terms, the campaign backed out of the deal, Delgado’s lawsuit charges.

Miller has admitted he had an affair with Delgado and is the father of their son, who was conceived during the 2016 campaign, when he was also having an affair with Catherine Frazier, Senator Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign press secretary. In a related case, he also acknowledged he hired prostitutes, and visited “Asian-themed” massage parlors where he paid to be jerked off, specifying that the service was performed manually rather than orally, as Mediaite revealed. Miller has vigorously denied other allegations made by Delgado, including that he raped her, that he surreptitiously dosed a dancer at an Orlando strip club that he impregnated with an “abortion pill,” or that he’s “a demon.”

In addition to Delgado and Miller, who is working on Trump’s 2024 campaign, other members of the cast of characters include:

• Ellis, a prominent figure in Trump's successful 2016 presidential run against Hillary Clinton. Last October, she pleaded guilty to a felony charge of aiding and abetting false statements related to Trump's efforts to reverse his defeat to Joe Biden in the 2020 election.

• “Boris,” the staffer the Trump campaign allegedly settled multiple claims against, is believed to be Boris Epshteyn, who former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon once labeled Trump’s “wartime consigliere.” As noted by Zach Everson of Forbes, who first reported on Delgado’s July 4 filing, Epshteyn — who’s advising the former president’s campaign this year as well and is currently facing charges for allegedly helping orchestrate a scheme that was part of Trump's broader bid to reverse the results of the 2020 election — was arrested three years ago over claims he repeatedly groped two women at an Arizona nightclub. “All night he’s been like touching me and my sister, especially my sister,” one of the women said during an interview that was recorded on a cop’s body camera. “He kind of cornered her and grabbed her...Touching her after we repeatedly told him to stop.”Epshteyn eventually pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct charges and served probation after prosecutors dropped more serious counts, including attempted sexual abuse. His conviction was set aside this year.

• Michael Glassner, Trump’s deputy campaign manager from 2015 to 2020, who Ellis proposed was aware of the claims against Epshteyn and the purported payoffs. Glassner currently runs the Patriot Legal Defense Fund, which was created to pay legal bills racked up by Trump’s allies and is heavily financed by QAnon supporters.

Former President Trump is not a defendant in the case, but Delgado is not a fan unless I’m misinterpreting this recent retweet of hers.

Lawyers for the Trump campaign have spent the last three months fighting tooth and nail to prevent Delgado from deposing Glassner. They apparently conceded defeat last week after Magistrate Judge Katharine H. Parker, who’s overseeing the case of Arlene Delgado v. Trump For President, which is being heard in the United States District Court, Southern District of New York, apparently reached her breaking point with the delaying tactics of the defendants, who include Bannon, Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee during the 2016 campaign, and Sean Spicer, who served as the Trump administration’s press secretary and communications director.

Trump had picked Miller for the latter post but he unexpectedly resigned before ever beginning the job, saying in a statement on Christmas Eve of 2016, just days after he was appointed, “My wife and I are…excited about the arrival of our second daughter in January, and I need to put them in front of my career.” He reached the decision shortly after Delgado posted on Twitter, “Congratulations to the baby-daddy on being named WH ­Comms Director!” which was probably just a coincidence.

In any event, Parker ruled last Thursday that the defendants had failed to “provide a specific reason for Glassner’s unavailability on the morning of October 21st or 22nd, nor have they provided Plaintiff with alternative dates when Glassner would be available in the morning. By close of business today, Defendants shall provide to Plaintiff five dates in October that Glassner is available to be deposed in the morning, to accommodate Plaintiffs childcare restrictions.”

That finally forced lawyers for Trump for President to cave. “In light of the Court’s Orders, Mr. Glassner has rearranged his business appointments on the morning of October 22, 2024 and agreed to make himself available at 9:30 am, which was the date and time originally sought by Plaintiff,” they stated in a letter to Judge Parker later that day.

“If Glassner reveals the names of Epshteyn’s other victims on October 22, you can be sure Delgado will immediately seek to depose them and the transcript of Glassner’s deposition will become public — less than two weeks before the election,” said the lawyer who alerted me to Parker’s ruling, who said the development could amount to an October Surprise.

Personally, I’m not sure Glassner’s deposition, assuming it in fact takes place as scheduled, will have much impact no matter what he says. Numerous other women have filed similar complaints against Trump and his political committees and met with “scorched-earth tactics” from his lawyers, to cite the words of ProPublica. Among the accusers was Stormy Daniels, who charged the former president’s one-time attorney Michael Cohen paid her $130,000 in hush money shortly before the 2016 election to keep quiet about an affair she had with Trump a decade earlier. In May, Trump was found guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records to conceal the payments to Daniels, but the verdict had no perceptible political impact.

Whether the unfolding events in Arlene Delgado v. Trump For President prove different or not, I’m going to enjoy every second because in my opinion the country is led by a bipartisan crew of corrupt sociopaths who deserve nothing but contempt and should be relentlessly mocked, and I certainly intend to make the most of this delicious opportunity.