Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff acknowledged Saturday that he had an affair during his first marriage, years before he began dating Vice President Harris.<\/p>\n
\u201cDuring my first marriage, Kerstin and I went through some tough times on account of my actions. I took responsibility, and in the years since, we worked through things as a family and have come out stronger on the other side,\u201d Emhoff said in a statement released to the news media after a British tabloid reported on the affair.<\/p>\n
Emhoff and his then-wife, Kerstin Emhoff, divorced after the affair. <\/p>\n
\u201cDoug and I decided to end our marriage for a variety of reasons, many years ago,\u201d Kerstin Emhoff said in a statement Saturday. \u201cHe is a great father to our kids, continues to be a great friend to me and I am really proud of the warm and supportive blended family Doug, Kamala, and I have built together.\u201d<\/p>\n
A person familiar with the situation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive details, said the affair was known to people who conducted the vice-presidential vetting process four years ago when President Biden was running for office. Harris knew about the affair before she and Emhoff married more than a decade ago, the person added.<\/p>\n
Brian Fallon, a spokesman for the Harris campaign, declined to comment.<\/p>\n
Doug and Kerstin Emhoff have two adult children, Cole and Ella Emhoff.<\/p>\n
Kerstin Emhoff has been publicly supportive of Harris, the presumptive Democratic nominee, and called her an integral part of the family. She volunteered for Harris\u2019s 2019 presidential run and attended the Biden-Harris inauguration in 2021 alongside Ella and Cole. Harris has called Kerstin Emhoff a \u201cdear\u201d friend.<\/p>\n
When Republican nominee Donald Trump\u2019s vice-presidential pick, JD Vance, suggested that Harris and other prominent Democrats \u201cdon\u2019t really have a direct stake\u201d in the country\u2019s future because they are \u201cpeople without children,\u201d Kerstin Emhoff came to Harris\u2019s defense.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor over 10 years, since Cole and Ella were teenagers, Kamala has been a co-parent with Doug and I,\u201d she said. \u201cShe is loving, nurturing, fiercely protective, and always present. I love our blended family and am grateful to have her in it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Emhoff gave his first statement about the affair to CNN after the Daily Mail, a British tabloid, published a story on the relationship early Saturday.<\/p>\n
Trump, who has been married three times, has also been accused of infidelity but has denied such accusations. His alleged affair with adult film actress Stormy Daniels \u2014 and a $130,000 hush money payment ahead of the 2016 presidential election to try to keep it quiet \u2014 led to a criminal conviction earlier this year.<\/p>\n
More than a dozen women have accused Trump of sexual misconduct. He has repeatedly denied wrongdoing. In January, a civil jury ordered Trump to pay the writer E. Jean Carroll more than $83 million for defaming her after she accused him in 2019 of sexually assaulting her two decades earlier. After one of her lawsuits went to trial last year, a jury found that Trump sexually abused and defamed Carroll and awarded her a combined $5 million in damages. That resulted in a separate jury hearing earlier this year to determine whether Trump owed Carroll additional damages.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff acknowledged Saturday that he had an affair during his first marriage, years before he began dating Vice President Harris. \u201cDuring my first marriage, Kerstin and I went through some tough times on account of my actions. I took responsibility, and in the years since, we worked through things as a family […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":7256,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7255\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}