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Wednesday, October 2, 2024

Emhoff accused of ‘forcefully slapping’ NYC girlfriend flirting with another man at 2012 gala: report

 Vice President Kamala Harris’ husband is being accused of slapping his ex-girlfriend for flirting with a valet worker at a ritzy gala in 2012, a new report claims.

Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, 59, supposedly struck his then-girlfriend — a successful New York attorney — in the face so hard she spun around while in a valet line after an event at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2012, the three unnamed friends of the woman reportedly told the Daily Mail.

All three sources requested not to be named due to fear of retaliation from Emhoff, the Daily Mail said.

Kamala Harris embraces her husband, Doug Emhoff.REUTERS

They shared a series of photos showing Emhoff posing with the woman in 2012, as well as other documents related to the allegations.

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She declined to comment on the story, the outlet said.

Emhoff, a successful entertainment lawyer, and Harris met on a blind date in 2013, and then married in 2014.

The woman – who was not identified — allegedly called one of the friends sobbing in her cab immediately after the incident, the outlet said.

“It was hard to hear her because she was sobbing. She told me she was with a guy and he hit her,” the source, a New York businessman, recalled.

“It was very clear what she was telling me. She said she was with a guy, her date, she was at the Cannes Film Festival, and he hit her. She was in the car with the guy at the time.

Second gentleman Doug Emhoff claps as Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s Phoenix Awards dinner at Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, September 14, 2024.REUTERS

“I didn’t know what to do, I didn’t know whether to call the French police. I couldn’t get a hold of her after calling back.”

The friend claimed that he got more details about what happened later on.

“In later conversations, but pretty contemporaneous with that, she told me more about the guy,” he added.

“It was something like 3 a.m. They were trying to get out of there and they both had been drinking. There was a gigantic line for taxis.

“[Jane] went up to one of the valet guys, offered him 100 Euros or whatever, to get to the head of the line. She told me she put her hand on his shoulder. Doug apparently thought that she was flirting, and came over and slapped her in the face.”

Jane slapped Emhoff back, the businessman said.

“My impression is that he had a lot to drink. She was sobbing [on the phone afterwards], but she wasn’t slurring her words,” he said of Jane’s conversation with him right after the incident.

“She told me that she broke up with him that night.”

The pair had been dating for about three months, the Daily Mail said.

A second friend – another New York-based female attorney said that Jane also told her about the incident, the Daily Mail claimed.

“They had dinner. She said Doug was very charming, and it was lovely. Then I believe it was between 2-3am, it was still raging, but she was wearing four-inch heels and a floor-length gown, so it was time to depart,” the lawyer said.

“She said there’d been no fight before he hit her. You would have thought it was this fairytale trip.”

Jane was “completely caught off guard” by Emhoff’s sudden attack, she added.

“He hauled up and slapped her so hard she spun around. She said she was in utter shock.

“She was so furious, she slapped him on one side, and then on the other cheek with the other hand.”

All three friends said that Jane tried to leave following the assault, but that Emhoff forced his way into the cab with her, according to the Daily Mail.

“All of a sudden the car was there and they were ushering her into the car,” the attorney friend said.

“She said she wanted to go back to the hotel without him. But while she was shutting the door, he forced himself into the car, which she did not want.

“I think she asked him ‘what the f–k was that all about?’ in the car, and the only thing she could really get out of him was that he thought she was hitting on the valet.”

Jane was “so embarrassed” by what happened, the friend said.

“She couldn’t believe he is the person that he is, and that it turned into this trailer trash moment,” she lamented.

Doug and ex-wife Kerstin Emhoff divorced in 2008.@kemhoff/Instagram

“She realized he was bad news. This was the first time she saw his ugly side.”

Jane called her businessman friend because she wanted, “Doug to see her on the phone, telling somebody,” they explained.

“She felt that would afford her some protection.”

The third friend – described as a female executive at a top company – said Jane told her about what happened in 2018, when then-Senator Harris was in the news for grilling Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh over sexual assault allegations, according to the Mail.

“[She] is a gorgeous, strong woman and you would never expect somebody to hit her,” she told the Daily Mail.

Emhoff was allegedly unapologetic, she added.

“When he hit her she hit him back, like, ‘Don’t you ever do that again,’ she said.

“I asked her if he ever apologized. She said no, but he commented about the hit she gave him. It was a tennis metaphor. But no apology at all.

“He was a tennis fan,’ said the female attorney. ‘All he said to her was, ‘Don’t worry about it, you got one across the court and down the line.’”

Jane found Emhoff’s reaction “hurtful,” but “she didn’t want to feel like a victim,” the executive explained.

Emhoff allegedly ended the trip early to return to Los Angeles for his daughter Ella’s 13th birthday – and he and Jane never saw each other again, the three friends said.

Emhoff was accused of cheating on his wife with nanny Najen Naylor.Najen Naylor/Facebook
Taylor allegedly became pregnant during the affair but did not keep the baby.Najen Naylor/Linkedin

The trio shared a copy of Jane and Emhoff’ itinerary from the fateful trip, which showed  a layover flight from Newark, NJ, to Nice, France on May 22, 2012.

A return flight from Milan was originally booked for May 29.

In a May 17, 2012, email, Jane explained that she and Doug were leaving early so Emhoff could jet back to LA.

Jane and Emhoff’s relationship started after they connected on Match.com, the friends said.

It got serious in just three months, and Jane had already met Emhoff’s kids and parents.

Emhoff even supposedly included his son Cole in their first date in March 2012, the sources said.

“She went to a hotel bar to meet Doug after work. It was a typical Match.com date where you only commit to a drink,” the attorney friend told the Daily Mail.

“They were there an hour, and he told her his son was in the city walking around. I think he had just started college.

“She had this huge outdoor space at her apartment. She suggested they go to her apartment and order pizza.

“[Jane] said Cole started smoking, and Doug asked for one. The whole thing was weird. Doug liked her, so he incorporated Cole into the date.”

The Harris campaign did not immediately comment on the report.

The shocking allegations came just two months after Emhoff admitted to cheating on his first wife following a bombshell report that alleged he once got their nanny pregnant.

“During 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,” Emhoff told CNN in August.

The affair was disclosed to President Biden’s vetting committee four years ago, before he chose Harris as his running mate for the 2020 ticket, a source familiar with the situation told the outlet.

Emhoff was accused of betraying his wife over 15 years ago with Najen Naylor, a nanny who worked at the private school their two children attended.

Naylor supposedly became pregnant as a result of the relationship, but did not keep the baby, a close friend with knowledge of the predicament told the Daily Mail.

It was not clear exactly what the friend meant.

While Emhoff never named Naylor in his statement, he allegedly told his girlfriend in 2012 about both the relationship and pregnancy, the three friends told the Daily Mail.

He came clean about the situation when she questioned him about his divorce from his first wife, which was still ongoing when they were dating, the sources said.

“She felt for some reason his wife had the upper hand, and she couldn’t understand why that was,” the executive said.

“He told her that he had gotten the kid’s teacher pregnant, and that had been the cause for the divorce.”

According to Emhoff, Naylor had a miscarriage, which she blamed him for, the sources claimed.

Los Angeles Police Department records obtained by Daily Mail under the showed that police were called to a house where Naylor lived around the time she was allegedly pregnant, on the night of June 28, 2009, the outlet said.

The callout was given priority level three, which is a “life threatening emergency, lights and sirens on,” but the LAPD declined to give more information.

Emohoff denied that he caused Naylor to lose the pregnancy, but told the girlfriend that he paid her around $80,000 and had her sign a non-disclosure agreement, the Daily Mail reported.

“He did it rather matter-of-factly, not apologizing or saying he screwed up, but just like it was any other conversation,” the executive said.

The confession was a “serious red flag,” but the couple flew to Cannes later in the spring anyway, the friends noted to the publication.

After the relationship imploded, the now-Second Gentleman quickly moved on with Harris, whom he started seeing in 2013.

In her 2019 book “The Truths We Hold,” Harris described meeting Emhoff’s children just two months into the romance.

The couple married in August 2014.

Jane never thought about sharing her story until she witnessed Harris’ rise to power – with Emhoff at her elbow, the friends said.

‘He’s holding himself out to be something he absolutely is not. And that’s bulls–t,’ said the executive of Emhoff, who frequently positions himself as an outspoken ally of women. 

“I feel like people should know who their leaders really are.”

https://nypost.com/2024/10/02/us-news/doug-emhoff-accused-of-forcefully-slapping-nyc-girlfriend-for-flirting-with-other-man-at-ritzy-gala-in-2012-report/

Panic-Buying Already Spreading As Dockworker Strike Gets Underway

 By Noi Mahoney of FreightWaves

As union dockworkers began striking against employers at East and Gulf Coast ports early Tuesday morning, reports of panic-buying at supermarkets almost immediately started spreading across social media.

Video clips posted by social media users on X and Facebook showed people rushing to buy water, toilet paper, paper towels and other items at supermarkets and retailers across the U.S. 

“Are people already panic buying because of the Port Strike? Here are the grocery shelves in the water section at my local Kroger this morning. I realize that we are probably also low on water due to the Helene aftermath in East Tennessee, but still not great to see this already,” photographer and author Denise Van Patten posted in a social media video clip on X.

Micheal Coker posted on X, “Well the panic buying is in full swing in my little town in South carolina. Sam’s at 8:30 a.m., no water. Same at Walmart and grocery stores. Next will be toilet paper.”

The International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) is the union behind the strike against its United States Maritime Alliance (USMX) employers for a new master contract. The two groups negotiated back and forth up until late Monday night, when the union’s deadline for a strike expired at midnight.

Major issues on the bargaining table are wages, benefits and rules on port automation. The ILA said USMX’s latest reported wage increase proposal of 50% over six years of a new contract was rejected by its members.

The affected ports, represented by USMX, include three of the U.S.’s five busiest ports: the Port of New York and New Jersey, the Port of Savannah, Georgia, and Port Houston. 

Matthew Shay, president and CEO of the National Retail Federation, called on the Biden administration Tuesday to step in and help end the strike.

“A disruption of this scale during this pivotal moment in our nation’s economic recovery will have devastating consequences for American workers, their families and local communities,” Shay said in a news release. “After more than two years of runaway inflationary pressures and in the midst of recovery from Hurricane Helene, this strike will result in further hardship for American families.”

Shay urged the administration to prioritize the economy “and intervene immediately to prevent further hardship and deeper economic consequences.”

A prolonged strike could cause major disruption to the domestic supply chain, according to American Farm Bureau Federation Economist Daniel Munch.

“For international destinations, waterborne exports are vital to us farmers,” Munch said in a podcast on Thursday. “They make up over 75% of total U.S. agricultural export volume. The potential strike that we’re looking at would mainly disrupt containerized agricultural exports, which account for 30% of U.S. waterborne agriculture exports by volume. The remaining 70%, often grains and oil seeds, are shipped via bulk carriers, which are usually managed by independent workforces and will not be affected by the strike.”

He said U.S. farmers could be particularly vulnerable to a strike that lasts a week or more.

“The strike could have disastrous impacts on U.S. agriculture, depending on how long it lasts,” Munch said. “The disruption to overall agricultural trade is expected to be about $1.4 billion each week that a strike is in place. When we think about what commodities are at risk, nearly 80% of waterborne exports of poultry leave East Coast ports, 56% of raw cotton, 36% of red meat, 30% of dairy products and even 6% of soybeans all go through those ports, through containerized exports. Not having an outlet to move those goods will create supply surpluses domestically and reduce prices for farmers.”

The top retailers that could be affected by the work stoppage at the ports are Walmart, Ikea, Samsung and Home Depot, according to data from ImportGenius and Arbor Data Science.

Last year, Walmart led all U.S. retailers with the most imports to East and Gulf Coast ports. Officials for Walmart said they prepare for any potential disruptions to their supply chain.

“We prepare for unforeseen disruptions in our supply chain and maintain additional sources of supply to ensure we have key products available for our customers when and how they want them,” Jeffrey Essary, a global communications spokesperson for Walmart, told FreightWaves.

https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/panic-buying-already-spreading-dockworker-strike-gets-underway