Second gentleman Doug Emhoff’s ex speaks out about alleged 2012 assault at Cannes Film Festival: ‘I saw his dark side’
A former girlfriend of second gentleman Doug Emhoff said she was left “embarrassed and humiliated” when he slapped her following a gala dinner at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival in the South of France — adding that the husband of Vice President Kamala Harris has maintained a “completely fabricated persona” as a public figure.
The woman, a New York attorney identified only as “Jane,” told the Daily Mail in an interview published Thursday she was trying to hand a valet the equivalent of $100 to get her and Emhoff to the head of a taxi line when her beau struck.
“As I’m talking to him, Doug got out of the line, comes up, turns me around by my right shoulder. I’m completely caught off guard, I’m not bracing, I’m in four inch heels, wearing a full-length gown and it’s between 2-3 a.m.,” she told the outlet. “He slaps me so hard I spin around, and I’m in utter shock.”
“There had been no fight, no argument,” she added. “In that moment, his mask had dropped and I saw his dark side.”
Three friends of Jane came forward earlier this month with the initial allegations against Emhoff.
Two of them heard about the purported slap from her immediately after the incident, while the third was told about it six years later, in 2018.
“What’s frightening for a woman that’s been on the other end of it, is watching this completely fabricated persona being portrayed,” Jane told the Daily Mail in explaining why she decided to speak on the record.
“He’s being held out to be the antithesis of who he actually is. And that is utterly shocking.”
A spokesperson for Emhoff has vehemently denied the accusations, telling Semafor, “Any suggestion that he would or has ever hit a woman is false.”
Jane and Emhoff met on Match.com in 2012 while she was residing in New York and he in Los Angeles, according to the report. The pair went on their first date in March of that year, and Emhoff invited his eldest son Cole to join them.
“In retrospect, it should have been a red flag,” said Jane, who described their fling as “an intense few months.”
“He flew me to Los Angeles in April [2012]. I stayed in his home for a week. The entire time, he was alluding to marriage and having children with me,” she revealed. “He was totally love-bombing me. He grabbed me round the stomach and talked about wanting more babies.”
Both Jane and her current husband are registered Democrats who backed President Biden in both the 2020 primary as well as the general election and donated more than $10,000 to his campaign, per the report.
After Emhoff allegedly struck her during that booze-filled night in France, Jane remembers being utterly stunned.
“The only thing I could think to do was slap him back. I slapped him on one side, and on the other cheek with the other hand,” she recounted. “All of a sudden the car is there, the valet is ushering me in. I intended to go back to the hotel without him. So I was shutting the car door, but he forced his way into the car, which I did not want.”
“I’m embarrassed and humiliated that, this amazing experience turned into this violent spectacle,” she remembered thinking. “I can’t believe he just slapped me. I think I said to him in the car, ‘What the hell is wrong with you? Why did you do that?’ And the only thing I could get out of him was he thought I was hitting on the valet.'”
During the car ride, Jane made sure to reach out to a friend from New York to apprise him of what happened. That person was one of three sources to corroborate her account to the Daily Mail.
“I was in shock. I wanted somebody to know where I was, and what happened. I was freaked out because I thought I knew this person. But I don’t, and he’s in the car with me,” she added. “I also wanted Doug to see me on the phone telling somebody.”
Jane claimed she already had reservations about Emhoff, now 60, after he admitted he had cheated on his first wife, Kerstin Mackin, with Najen Naylor, the nanny of Emhoff’s daughter Ella — getting the woman pregnant in the process.
“All I did was ask him one question, and he told me the whole story,” she said, recalling the conversation in April 2012. “He’s telling me this very casually like it’s no big deal. He yelled at her. He never said he hit her, but he said he got really angry with her, and she subsequently claimed that whatever he did caused her to lose the pregnancy.”
“To be honest, I wanted to believe him at the time, because by all appearances this was turning into a serious relationship,” she reflected.
“I had just met both his children, his parents and many people he worked with at [law firm] Venable. But I did harbor reservations after this.”
Jane added that Emhoff revealed he had gotten Naylor to agree to an $80,000 nondisclosure agreement as part of a settlement.
The day after the alleged slap, Jane claimed, Emhoff was unapologetic and suggested that the two were “even” because she had slapped him back.
About a week later, she confided the ordeal to a friend who previously worked with Emhoff at Venable and claimed he had a “bad reputation” with women there.
The Daily Mail previously reported on accusations from the future second gentleman’s former colleagues at Venable that he was “inappropriate” and “misogynistic” toward his female colleagues.
A 2019 lawsuit obtained by The Post charged that Emhoff hired an assistant named “Katya” who was widely considered unqualified but was “young, attractive and friendly with the powerful men in the office.”
Emhoff raised another red flag with Jane prior to the amfAR dinner after which the Cannes assault allegedly took place.
“We went outside and sat on the loungers,” she recalled. “I’m in a bikini. He wanted to take a picture of me. I didn’t think anything of it. Later on, he sent me a couple of pictures. The picture he took of me did not include my head.”
“He was just giggling about it like a pubescent boy,” she added. “It was gross and I felt so humiliated. In retrospect, I believe he was intentionally objectifying me to diminish me. That’s the kind of person he is.”
During an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” earlier this month, Emhoff had dismissed what host Joe Scarborough called “tabloid stories about your personal life.”
“It’s all a distraction. It’s designed to try to get us off our game,” Emhoff responded, without denying Jane’s story.
Days earlier, Emhoff sat down with former White House press secretary and current MSNBC host Jen Psaki, who praised him as the “wife guy” that had “reshaped the perception of masculinity.”
“Every time I see Doug on TV portraying the persona of a perfect spouse and non-toxic man, I wonder if Najen is watching too and feeling as disgusted as I am,” Jane reflected.
“I’ve been telling this story to my friends. And I kept saying, ‘This is a big deal, why doesn’t anybody in the media care?’ And apparently nobody did,” she told the Daily Mail. “Not a single reporter has directly asked Doug about these allegations.
“When some news organizations re-reported your reporting, they even left out the claim that the teacher had become pregnant. I was livid. It’s just so clear what’s happening. I’m so disgusted.”
In retrospect, Jane told the Daily Mail, the assault “was the best thing that could possibly have happened, because his mask dropped, and I realized I shouldn’t waste another moment with him.”
