Former Democratic Rep. Katie Hill, who resigned from Congress after admitting she and her husband had formed an inappropriate relationship with a young female staffer, has announced that she is pregnant — and the father is a journalist who acted as Hill’s foremost defender.
Hill stated that she is 21 weeks pregnant with a child she says she conceived with her current beau, Alex Thomas, the former political correspondent for Playboy magazine.
“Soon they’ll be a threesome,” wrote Lee Brown in the New York Post.
Hill told Vanity Fair that she considers this child a “miracle baby,” since a battle with endometriosis has left her with only one ovary.
The couple’s photoshoot, published in the magazine on Tuesday, features a bikini-clad and visibly pregnant Hill in the arms of a shirtless Thomas.
2 years later…my next chapter. https://t.co/m19JIZyWGj
— Katie Hill (@KatieHill4CA) October 19, 2021
A more revealing set of photos cost the scandal-plagued California Democrat her congressional seat in 2019. The Daily Mail, a U.K.-based newspaper, published photos that showed a nude Hill, who was 32 at the time, and her then-husband, Kenneth Heslep, with a 24-year-old campaign staffer named Morgan Desjardins. Some of the photographs showed Hill brushing the staffer’s hair and smoking a bong.
Desjardins described the relationship as “toxic” and told Hill, “I am terrified of pushing back against you or upsetting you.” Heslep described the throuple’s relationship as “abusive.” Aside from the relationship dynamics, many said the power and age differential between Hill and Desjardins made the relationship suspect.
“Katie Hill’s story — our story — is also one of workplace abuse and harassment,” wrote a group of “former staff” in a series of tweets posted on Hill’s Twitter feed. “Katie took advantage of her subordinates. She caused immense harm to the people who worked for her, many of whom were young women just beginning their careers in politics.”
Hill claimed that she is the victim of an “abusive” husband who set out to ruin her life with “revenge porn.”
Thomas sprang to Hill’s defense, adding a political element to the controversy by alleging that Hill had been targeted by the National Republican Congressional Committee’s vast right-wing conspiracy.
“The NRCC was shopping around the Katie Hill images and that they got them directly from right-wing radio host Joe Messina,” Thomas asserted in a since-deleted tweet on October 29, 2019. But one day later, Thomas was forced to admit that the NRCC “ never had their hands on the photos.” Ultimately, he ran the story in his personal newsletter rather than in Playboy.
At the time, Thomas did not disclose that he and Hill had already been dating for months. “The two had their first real interaction at the congressional softball game in June 2019,” Vanity Fair disclosed. The couple went public last February when they went out on a date to a Manhattan book party, which was also attended by CNN’s Brian Stelter and Oliver Darcy.
Vanity Fair’s profile, which does not mention Desjardins’ name, continues to present Hill’s side of the scandal. “Yes, Hill engaged in an inappropriate, arguably exploitative, relationship with a campaign staffer. But she was also a victim,” the magazine claims.
Hill sued the Daily Mail, RedState.com Managing Editor Jennifer Van Laar, and nationally syndicated radio host Joseph Messina for publishing nude photos without her consent, something that normally violates California state law. But in June, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Yolanda Orozco ruled that the photos had inherent news value and that Hill violated a different state law preventing people from filing lawsuits in order to stifle free speech. Judge Orozco ordered Hill to pay a total of $220,000 in attorneys’ fees to the conservative news outlets. Hill tells Vanity Fair that she “felt like there was a fundamental injustice here that happened and could only happen to a woman.”
Hill responded by attacking the journalistic integrity of her opponents, saying in April that she could not believe that a court declared that “a partisan blog is a news outlet.” Her attorney, Carrie Goldberg, snipes this week that Hill’s nude photos “were published by the mainstream media—if we want to call the Daily Mail that.” And Thomas grouses about the decision, saying, “You grow up thinking the good guys win … it’s just like, that’s not how the world works.”
Vanity Fair describes Hill as “deflated,” noting that “Hill—broke and without a steady paycheck—is considering bankruptcy.” Hill says she plans to tend to her political action committee, Her Time, and Vanity Fair reports that she is “working behind the scenes to shepherd legislation that would make the sharing of nonconsensual pornography a federal crime.”
“That’s what’s going to get me through the next year,” Hill says. “Then I guess by November, next year, after the midterms, I can kind of take stock again” about whether she wants to run for her old congressional seat, which is now held by Republican Mike Garcia.
Despite credible claims of sexual harassment, the legacy media have kept Hill visible and gently prodded her to run for office again. After pressing Hill numerous times about her political plans, CNN’s Brianna Keilar said in June, “We will keep asking.” Two months later, MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan asked Hill to comment on Governor Andrew Cuomo’s resignation would “move us forward” toward realizing the goals of the #MeToo movement. Neither asked Hill about her own purportedly abusive behavior.
Vanity Fair did not ask about the propriety of Thomas staging a public defense of Hill without acknowledging their romantic relationship.
“It’s baffling that someone who has sex with the subject of his glowing puff piece articles making now-retracted accusations against our organization is a credentialed member of the press,” a spokesman for the NRCC told the Washington Free Beacon shortly after Hill confirmed that she and Thomas began dating mid-2019. “This is a sad day for proponents of journalistic ethics along with those who read Playboy for the articles.”
Related:
- Katie Hill, Democratic Ex-Congresswoman In ‘Throuple’ Must Pay Conservative Newspaper $105K After Lawsuit Backfires
- MSNBC Asks Congresswoman Accused of Sexual Harassment How to Solve Cuomo’s Sexual Harassment
- 3 Democrats The Media Are Thirsty To Have Back In Politics
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.