Carl DeMaio’s run for Congress in 2014 was derailed by a sexual harassment claim from a former aide, who Friday pleaded guilty to lying to FBI officials.
Todd Bosnich had previously claimed that he received an anonymous email stating if he revealed he had been sexually harassed by DeMaio he would never work in politics again. Bosnich alleged that the email had come from his former boss, Republican congressional candidate Carl DeMaio.
DeMaio, who is openly gay, claims the false attack on him was a “smear the queer” campaign. He believes the claim was part of an effort from his opponent, Democratic incumbent Scott Peters to keep social conservatives from voting for DeMaio.
“That’s why this allegation was so vicious, so disgusting and so harmful. Because Mr. Peters played on the notion of ‘Oh, he’s a sexual deviant.’ … That’s why this was frustrating,” DeMaio told The Daily Beast in an interview published Sunday.
Peters won the campaign by only a little over three percentage points. He distanced himself from DeMaio’s claims that he was behind the accusations.
“Those allegations came from two former Republican staffers. To blame it on me is something Carl is trying to do to avoid answering some of those questions himself,” Peters told the Beast. “And, again, the police did not say that those allegations were false.”
The other allegation Peters is referring to came days before the election. No charges had ever been filed against DeMaio from these claims.
“Instead of having an empathetic human reaction, Scott Peters continued to perpetuate a smear. That’s really low, ok dude? You won the election,” DeMaio said in response to Peters’ statement.
Bosnich revealed in his guilty plea that he had sent himself the email through a fake Yahoo! account and than brought the email to the Peters campaign.
The campaign between Peters and DeMaio had been a testy one, beginning in May with a robbery of the DeMaio campaign office. Bosnich was a suspect in the robbery, and campaign documents stolen had appeared in the Peters office, before they handed them over to San Diego police.
Peters’ campaign manager MaryAnne Pinter was the person who initially reported Bosnich’s claims to the police.
She defended herself to the San Diego Union Tribune saying,” “A young man I had never met before reached out to me saying he’d been sexually assaulted and threatened by Carl DeMaio.”
Bosnich had been fired earlier in the year for plagiarism. The fake email he had sent himself was part of a plan to back up his claims that DeMaio had previously touched Bosnich and masterbated in front of him.
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In an emailed statement, DeMaio, who is now a talk radio host, also demands an apology from CNN over their coverage of Bosnich’s accusations.
“I am also calling for CNN to correct the record of their shameful reporting. Investigative Reporter Chris Frates went on Jake Tapper’s show to irresponsibly broadcast Bosnich’s lies in the last days of the election,” he wrote. “Sadly, Frates and CNN editors were given the same exact evidence that the FBI was given and yet ignored it.”