Terry McAuliffe Sneaks Off to Las Vegas for Fundraiser with Democrat Gov. Sisolak, Who Is Accused of Abusing Ex-Wife

Former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, who is running for his old job again, is en route to Las Vegas, Nevada, to hold a fundraiser Thursday night with Nevada’s Democrat Gov. Steve Sisolak, a man accused of abusing his ex-wife and of impropriety by another woman.

One woman, Sisolak’s ex-girlfriend, years later recanted allegations she made in 2012 against him, including claims she made that Sisolak was inappropriate with her then-15-year-old underage daughter. Another woman, Sisolak’s ex-wife, stands by her allegations as of now, but her and Sisolak’s two daughters—who are adults now but were underage at the time of the alleged 2000 incident—fervently defended their father and undercut their mother’s story when it came out publicly in 2018.

These allegations are newly relevant now in two major ways politically: First and foremost, since Sisolak is running for reelection next year in Nevada—especially after the downfall of New York Democrat Gov. Andrew Cuomo—years-old allegations of impropriety by powerful men from women they allegedly victimize continue to reverberate years later, and sometimes the full story takes years or even decades to materialize.

Secondly, Sisolak’s decision to host Virginia’s Democrat gubernatorial candidate, McAuliffe—and McAuliffe’s decision to appear with him in Las Vegas despite these charges—is particularly newsworthy as well a few months before the Old Dominion state will decide whether to give McAuliffe another shot at leading the state or voters will swing the pendulum back to the Republicans by electing businessman Glenn Youngkin.

What’s more, McAuliffe has a history of surrounding himself with those very same powerful types of men it took years to expose for said impropriety—including being a close ally of former President Bill Clinton and of disgraced ex-Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein.

The most powerful allegation against Sisolak comes from his ex-wife, who in 2018 gave an interview that leveled serious charges against him. While their two daughters do not back up her story, several friends and pieces of contemporary evidence that came out at the time did corroborate her allegations.

Sisolak’s ex-wife, Lori Ann “Dallas” Garland, spoke out in 2018 in a Daily Caller exclusive accusing her ex-husband of physically harming her several months after she filed for divorce in January 2000 and was getting her things from their marital home in August 2000.

The Daily Caller’s Andrew Kerr reported in October 2018, a few weeks before Sisolak’s election as governor of Nevada:

Garland detailed an incident in August 2000 in which she says Sisolak threatened to call the police on her after he allegedly left her with a bruise on her neck. Garland provided The Daily Caller News Foundation with pictures she said her lawyer took of her bruised neck, along with entries of her contemporaneous diary detailing the altercation. Three of Garland’s longtime friends told TheDCNF they personally saw her bruised neck after the incident.

The photographs, published in the Daily Caller article, show Garland’s bruised neck. Kerr wrote:

The altercation occurred on Aug. 24, 2000, the day after she moved out of their marital home, according to an entry in her contemporaneous diary, which was reviewed by TheDCNF. Garland wrote in the entry that she returned to the house that evening after picking up her two daughters from the local community center to retrieve her make-up, which she had forgotten to pack the day before. Garland wrote that she tried to follow her kids as they entered the house through the garage, but Sisolak blocked her at the door. Garland tried to push her way past Sisolak after he told her to provide a list to his lawyers of the things she wanted to collect, the diary entry read. Garland told TheDCNF there was no court order at the time that prevented her from entering her house.

The story then quotes Garland describing what happened:

I tried to push the door open. I told him I’m not leaving without my makeup, it’s not like I was going to do anything else, I just wanted my makeup. He was trying to shut the door. He had his arm out and had it up against my neck pushing me and trying to shut the door.

Kerr’s report continues with more of the gruesome allegations against the now-governor of Nevada:

Garland said she and Sisolak pushed against each at the door for a few moments until, she charges, her ex-husband suddenly “stumbled back on purpose and fell on the floor,” allegedly claiming to be injured while yelling at their daughter, Carley, that she had to stay away from her “dangerous” mother.

“Our daughter, Carley, was crying hysterically, yelling, ‘Daddy, please just let Mommy have her makeup,’” Garland said.

Garland said she walked over her ex-husband, who she said was groveling, grabbed her makeup from the bedroom and left the house without any further incident.

Garland wrote in her diary that her two daughters begged her not to get their father in trouble by telling their court-ordered psychologist about the incident.

“When I got back to the garage I told Carley I was sorry & that I wouldn’t get her dad in trouble,” the diary entry reads. “I told Steve I was sorry too.”

Garland denies ever forcing Sisolak onto the ground. She claims his fall was nothing more than a theatrical ploy to make her look bad in front of their child. Garland said Sisolak was 6 feet 3 inches tall and weighed over 200 pounds at the time of the incident, over double the weight of Garland, who was about 100 pounds.

“I think what Steve was trying to get me supervised visitation. He was trying to say there was domestic violence — that I hit him,” Garland said.

Garland said she learned through her lawyer the following day that Sisolak was threatening to call the police on her. She said the threats stopped after she had her lawyer send Sisolak a picture of the bruise on the right side of her neck.

“Steve would have went to jail, because he didn’t have a mark on him,” Garland said.
TheDCNF contacted the attorney Garland said took a picture of her bruised neck, Jon Norheim, who declined to say if he recalled taking the photo.

“I’m sure that whatever happened in her life was incredibly important and memorable to her and she would have a really good memory of it, but I did a lot of cases and they were all similar, and my recollection of 18 to 20 years ago is pretty poor,” Norheim told TheDCNF.

In response to these allegations from Garland, Sisolak’s campaign did not deny a physical altercation—but instead his 2018 governor campaign said Garland was the aggressor, not Sisolak. What’s more, his team provided sworn statements from Sisolak’s and Garland’s two daughters backing up Sisolak and undercutting Garland.

The Sisolak campaign did not deny that a physical altercation occurred between Garland and Sisolak in August 2000. The campaign provided sworn statements from Sisolak’s daughters signed Oct. 17, 2018, that, put together, share similarities with the account of the altercation detailed in Garland’s diary, with one key difference — that it was Garland who had injured their father.

The sworn statements of Ashley and Carley Sisolak — who were, respectively, 13 and 10 at the time — detailed a physical altercation that occurred on August 24, 2000, nearly 20 years prior, at 7 p.m. when Garland arrived at their home to retrieve her makeup before Sisolak stopped her at the garage door, just as described in Garland’s diary.

The daughters’ sworn statements differ in that they say it was Garland who was the aggressor against Sisolak. Ashley said Garland “battered” her father, who she said slipped on a rug and fell to the ground after Garland pushed him.

The second allegation against Sisolak came from an ex-girlfriend named Kathleen Vermillion, a former Henderson City, Nevada, councilwoman who dated Sisolak when he was Clark County Commissioner. When they had a high-profile breakup after a five-year relationship, the two Nevada officials had dueling press conferences leveling all sorts of accusations at each other—including Vermillion claiming inappropriate behavior by Sisolak when it came to her at-the-time underage then-15-year-old daughter.

The Las Vegas Sun had this detail from its coverage in 2012 of the high-profile spat from a press conference, with attorneys for Vermillion alleging that Sisolak took the young girl to Victoria’s Secret:

The media were shown a highly edited video interview of Vermillion’s 15-year-old daughter.
In the video, the daughter said on two or three occasions Sisolak took her to the lingerie store Victoria’s Secret. She also said Sisolak would give her money and send her text messages after 11 p.m.

Fierro said the messages and money came even after Sisolak and Vermillion broke up in October.

“After 11 o’clock at night,” Fierro said. “Does that sound like the actions of a reasonable person?”

The Las Vegas Review Journal story on it claims that Vermillion’s attorneys claimed Sisolak would have the then-underage girl model bathing suits for him:

Vermillion’s team told Sisolak they had a news conference scheduled for Monday to show a video of her 15-year-old daughter saying Sisolak had her model bathing suits for him, took her on a “movie date” and texted her late at night.

The teen also said that Sisolak was “obsessed with her looks and how she dressed” and that he tried to continue his relationship with her even after he and Vermillion ended their rocky five-year romance in October.

Importantly, however, Vermillion later recanted her allegations against Sisolak and sent a letter to Republican Adam Laxalt—whose 2018 gubernatorial campaign featured the allegations in part in an attack ad website it made against Sisolak—threatening to sue if he continued to use the allegations she was now, six years later, recanting.

The Nevada Independent reported this on Vermillion recanting the allegations:

In the letter to Laxalt, an attorney for Vermillion refers to “her current admission of her untruthfulness with regard to those accusations back in late 2011 and early 2012” and hints at potential litigation if their use brings her emotional distress and sets back her recovery from substance abuse.

“I also advised her that by coming forward as to the falsity of the accusations she made, any use of them by you or on your behalf, without also simultaneously revealing their untruth, could be actionable by her if it caused severe emotional distress resulting in mental or physical damage to her, such as relapse into addiction,” wrote attorney Dominic Gentile.

The 2018 Nevada Independent story also reveals that a 2012 police report found a police investigation into the claims on the video of Vermillion’s daughter proved it to be unreliable—and that the daughter told police her comments on the video were taken out of context. The report continues:

A police report obtained by The Nevada Independent concluded that Vermillion and others provided ‘some level of coaching’ for her daughter’s answers, and that the video was edited ‘to look like something it was not.’ In an interview with police, Vermillion’s daughter said the video was out of context and that her answers had been prodded by her mother’s then-attorney.

What’s more, the Las Vegas Police Department apparently requested a warrant for Vermillion’s arrest on extortion charges—but local prosecutors declined to bring charges against her—backing up Sisolak’s claim he was being extorted for nearly $4 million.

Nonetheless, a fundraising invitation obtained by Breitbart News shows that McAuliffe is indeed proceeding with a fundraiser alongside Sisolak in Las Vegas at an undisclosed location on Thursday evening. The fundraiser invite asks for at least $500 to attend as a guest to up to $5,000 to be a “sponsor.” Mid-level donors can give $1,000 to be McAuliffe’s “friend” and $2,500 to be his “ally.”

McAuliffe’s campaign has not replied to a request for comment from Breitbart News on this matter—including when asked specifically about the multiple allegations against Sisolak, the recanted one and the one his ex-wife still stands by publicly.

That, combined with McAuliffe’s history of associating with Democrats and elitists accused of sexual misconduct, has his GOP opponent Youngkin’s campaign ripping him.

“I guess if you’re best friends with predators like Harvey Weinstein and spent decades doing God knows what with Bill Clinton, prowling around Vegas with another abuser is just another day that ends in Y for Terry McAuliffe,” Youngkin spokesman Christian Martinez told Breitbart News.

Interestingly, McAuliffe’s history with such individuals is certainly long. In 1999, the Washington Post called him the “first cheerleader” for then-President Clinton as he battled allegations of sexual impropriety surrounding the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

McAuliffe, per a recent Washington Free Beacon report, actually hosted a fundraiser in 2019 with a convicted sex offender Democrat who served jail time for having sex with an underage assistant.

In 2007, McAuliffe called Weinstein a “friend” and accepted more than $57,000 in campaign contributions from him.

According to a report in the Daily Mail this year, McAuliffe took another $100,000 from a billionaire hedge fund manager named Paul Tudor this cycle even though Tudor very aggressively and publicly defended Weinstein.

McAuliffe even reportedly left his wife in the delivery room while she was giving birth to their child for a Washington Post party, showed back up for the birth of their son Peter, and then on the way home from the hospital made a pit stop at a Democrat Party fundraiser to mingle with donors and raise another cool million dollars.

Voters in both states—in Virginia later this year and in Nevada next year—have the opportunity to go a different direction than both of these men. It remains to be seen if that happens, or if the voters approve of—or are willing to overlook—all of this.