MischievousMonkey
Gor bu dëgër
The congressman solicited “a long slow rim job” and “deep throat” sexual acts “while you stroke my cock and I cum on your tonsils.”
WASHINGTON – Rep. Van Taylor apologized Wednesday for an affair with an ex-jihadist dubbed the “ISIS bride” by British tabloids and abruptly dropped his bid for a third term, conceding the GOP runoff to rival Keith Self, a former Collin County judge.
“About a year ago, I made a horrible mistake that has caused deep hurt and pain among those I love most in this world. I had an affair, it was wrong, and it was the greatest failure of my life,” he said in an email to supporters.
The infidelity surfaced just before Tuesday’s primary with help from a third candidate, Suzanne Harp.
A Plano resident named Tania Joya -- widow of the most infamous American to join the Islamic State – contacted Harp last Thursday, hoping she would confront Taylor privately and persuade him to drop out and resign from Congress.
Instead, Harp sent a supporter to interview Joya, who along with her husband has been profiled in the The Atlantic and tabloid fodder for years in her native Britain.
On Sunday afternoon, two days before the primary, a rightwing website, National File, posted audio of that 35-minute interview full of salacious details about the nine-month affair. The next day, the conservative site Breitbart posted a similar story that it labeled “exclusive,”
Conservatives gleefully spread the stories on social media.
Although Taylor has enjoyed stellar ratings from the NRA, Heritage and other conservative groups, he was one of four Texas Republicans who voted to certify President Joe Biden’s victory,
That earned a snub as Donald Trump endorsed nearly all other Texas congressional incumbents, and Self and Harp had made it central to the campaign.
On Monday night Harp, having orchestrated the publicity, pounced.
She called the revelation of the affair “shocking…disturbing and unbecoming of a sitting U.S. Representative” and warned that it would be “dangerous to have compromised and corrupt representation in Washington.”
Taylor’s campaign website describes him as “Family Man. Businessman. United States Marine.” There’s video footage of him and his wife, Anne, happily walking hand in hand. In a wedding photo, he’s in a Marine dress uniform – they married after he returned from Iraq. They have three daughters.
The reality was at odds with the image.
“Today I am announcing I will not continue my campaign to seek re-election to Congress,” Taylor wrote his supporters.
Taylor, a real estate executive with undergraduate and MBA degrees from Harvard, spent four years each in the Texas House and Senate.
He’s expected to serve the remainder of his term, which ends when the new Congress is sworn in on Jan. 3.
“I want to apologize for the pain I have caused with my indiscretion, most of all to my wife Anne and our three daughters. For months, Anne and I have been working to repair the scars left by my actions. I am unworthy, but eternally thankful for her love and forgiveness,” he wrote.
Joya said she and Taylor met through her work as an ex-jihadist helping to reprogram extremists, and the affair lasted from October 2020 to June 2021.
“We were very close,” Joya told The Dallas Morning News on Monday night.
“I have let down so many other family members, friends, colleagues, supporters, and the people of the 3rd Congressional District whom I have had the great honor and privilege to represent. I am truly sorry, and I hope in time I can earn their forgiveness,” Taylor wrote, adding that his best wishes to Self as he seeks the seat.
The district – Collin County, where Self served a dozen years as the top elected official, and much of Hunt – is overwhelmingly Republican.
Joya said she didn’t intend to inject herself into the election, and didn’t even realize the primary was five days away when she contacted Harp. She was just annoyed at having to see her ex-lover’s face on billboards as she drove around Plano.
“All I wanted was for Suzanne Harp to just say, ‘Hey, I know your little scandal with Tania Joya. Would you like to resign before we embarrass you?’ But it didn’t happen like that,” Joya told The News.
Taylor led in early voting with 51.8% in a five-way race, enough to secure the nomination outright. But as it turned out, nearly half the votes were cast on Election Day and he hadn’t banked enough of a lead to withstand the fallout.
After Joya’s revelations surfaced, his Election Day share of the vote plunged to 45.2%.
Out of 63,981 ballots, Taylor fell 823 short of what he needed to avoid a runoff.
Support for Self, who served a dozen years as the chief executive of fast-growing Collin County, held steady. He ended up with 26.5% to Taylor’s 48.7%.
Harp ended up with 20.8%-- enough to play spoiler but not to make the runoff.
Joya’s first husband, John Georgelas, who grew up in Plano, converted to Islam and became a top recruiter for the extremist Islamic State.
In 2013, he took her and their three children to Northern Syria where, as Yahya Abu Hassan, he became the most important American fighting for ISIS.
He was killed in 2017 as the caliphate collapsed.
Three weeks after their arrival in Syria, Joya, pregnant, fled to Turkey with the children, then to Plano to live near her in-laws.
As the relationship with Taylor wound down, she said, she asked for help to pay off a credit card and pay some bills, and he gave her $5,000.
“I needed help. I was like, just help me out because that’s the least – the very least – he could do,” she said. “For him, it was like, ‘Okay, on the condition you don’t tell anyone.’ ... I didn’t want to tell anybody anything.”
Rep. Van Taylor apologizes for affair with ‘ISIS bride,’ abruptly drops reelection bid
WASHINGTON – Rep. Van Taylor apologized Wednesday for an affair with an ex-jihadist dubbed the “ISIS bride” by British tabloids and abruptly dropped his bid for a third term, conceding the GOP runoff to rival Keith Self, a former Collin County judge.
“About a year ago, I made a horrible mistake that has caused deep hurt and pain among those I love most in this world. I had an affair, it was wrong, and it was the greatest failure of my life,” he said in an email to supporters.
The infidelity surfaced just before Tuesday’s primary with help from a third candidate, Suzanne Harp.
A Plano resident named Tania Joya -- widow of the most infamous American to join the Islamic State – contacted Harp last Thursday, hoping she would confront Taylor privately and persuade him to drop out and resign from Congress.
Instead, Harp sent a supporter to interview Joya, who along with her husband has been profiled in the The Atlantic and tabloid fodder for years in her native Britain.
On Sunday afternoon, two days before the primary, a rightwing website, National File, posted audio of that 35-minute interview full of salacious details about the nine-month affair. The next day, the conservative site Breitbart posted a similar story that it labeled “exclusive,”
Conservatives gleefully spread the stories on social media.
Although Taylor has enjoyed stellar ratings from the NRA, Heritage and other conservative groups, he was one of four Texas Republicans who voted to certify President Joe Biden’s victory,
That earned a snub as Donald Trump endorsed nearly all other Texas congressional incumbents, and Self and Harp had made it central to the campaign.
On Monday night Harp, having orchestrated the publicity, pounced.
She called the revelation of the affair “shocking…disturbing and unbecoming of a sitting U.S. Representative” and warned that it would be “dangerous to have compromised and corrupt representation in Washington.”
Taylor’s campaign website describes him as “Family Man. Businessman. United States Marine.” There’s video footage of him and his wife, Anne, happily walking hand in hand. In a wedding photo, he’s in a Marine dress uniform – they married after he returned from Iraq. They have three daughters.
The reality was at odds with the image.
“Today I am announcing I will not continue my campaign to seek re-election to Congress,” Taylor wrote his supporters.
Taylor, a real estate executive with undergraduate and MBA degrees from Harvard, spent four years each in the Texas House and Senate.
He’s expected to serve the remainder of his term, which ends when the new Congress is sworn in on Jan. 3.
“I want to apologize for the pain I have caused with my indiscretion, most of all to my wife Anne and our three daughters. For months, Anne and I have been working to repair the scars left by my actions. I am unworthy, but eternally thankful for her love and forgiveness,” he wrote.
Joya said she and Taylor met through her work as an ex-jihadist helping to reprogram extremists, and the affair lasted from October 2020 to June 2021.
“We were very close,” Joya told The Dallas Morning News on Monday night.
“I have let down so many other family members, friends, colleagues, supporters, and the people of the 3rd Congressional District whom I have had the great honor and privilege to represent. I am truly sorry, and I hope in time I can earn their forgiveness,” Taylor wrote, adding that his best wishes to Self as he seeks the seat.
The district – Collin County, where Self served a dozen years as the top elected official, and much of Hunt – is overwhelmingly Republican.
Joya said she didn’t intend to inject herself into the election, and didn’t even realize the primary was five days away when she contacted Harp. She was just annoyed at having to see her ex-lover’s face on billboards as she drove around Plano.
“All I wanted was for Suzanne Harp to just say, ‘Hey, I know your little scandal with Tania Joya. Would you like to resign before we embarrass you?’ But it didn’t happen like that,” Joya told The News.
Taylor led in early voting with 51.8% in a five-way race, enough to secure the nomination outright. But as it turned out, nearly half the votes were cast on Election Day and he hadn’t banked enough of a lead to withstand the fallout.
After Joya’s revelations surfaced, his Election Day share of the vote plunged to 45.2%.
Out of 63,981 ballots, Taylor fell 823 short of what he needed to avoid a runoff.
Support for Self, who served a dozen years as the chief executive of fast-growing Collin County, held steady. He ended up with 26.5% to Taylor’s 48.7%.
Harp ended up with 20.8%-- enough to play spoiler but not to make the runoff.
Joya’s first husband, John Georgelas, who grew up in Plano, converted to Islam and became a top recruiter for the extremist Islamic State.
In 2013, he took her and their three children to Northern Syria where, as Yahya Abu Hassan, he became the most important American fighting for ISIS.
He was killed in 2017 as the caliphate collapsed.
Three weeks after their arrival in Syria, Joya, pregnant, fled to Turkey with the children, then to Plano to live near her in-laws.
As the relationship with Taylor wound down, she said, she asked for help to pay off a credit card and pay some bills, and he gave her $5,000.
“I needed help. I was like, just help me out because that’s the least – the very least – he could do,” she said. “For him, it was like, ‘Okay, on the condition you don’t tell anyone.’ ... I didn’t want to tell anybody anything.”
Rep. Van Taylor apologizes for affair with ‘ISIS bride,’ abruptly drops reelection bid
