Kamala Harris’s husband Doug Emhoff ‘forcefully slapped ex-girlfriend for flirting with another man’ in booze-fueled assault after date to star-studded gala

Vice President Kamala Harris’s husband assaulted his ex-girlfriend, three friends have told Dailymail.com.

The Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, 59, allegedly struck the woman in the face so hard she spun around, while waiting in a valet line late at night after a May 2012 Cannes Film Festival event in France.

One of her friends told DailyMail.com that the woman called him immediately after the incident, sobbing in her cab, and described the alleged assault.

DailyMail.com is not naming the woman, who is a successful New York attorney, but will refer to her by the pseudonym ‘Jane’.

A second friend said Jane, who had been dating Emhoff for three months, also told her about the alleged violence at the time.

A third friend told DailyMail.com that Jane first told her in 2014 that she had dated Emhoff, and recounted the full story of his alleged abuse in 2018, when then senator Harris was in the news after grilling Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in a Senate hearing over sexual assault allegations.

The friends, who all asked not to be named for fear of retaliation by Emhoff, shared with DailyMail.com pictures of him and Jane together from 2012, and other documents and communications corroborating elements of the story.

Jane declined to comment.

The shocking claims follow revelations by DailyMail.com that Emhoff cheated on his first wife and mother of his two kids around 2008, allegedly impregnating his daughter’s nanny who also worked as her grade school teacher.

Emhoff admitted the affair with the nanny and teacher, Najen Naylor, after DailyMail.com published the story last month.

All three of Jane’s friends said she also told them about a disturbing alleged incident during her relationship with the Second Gentleman, in which Emhoff nonchalantly admitted to impregnating Naylor.

Emhoff told Jane that the nanny accused him of causing her to have a miscarriage, the friends claimed.

According to the friends, Emhoff did not say how he was allegedly responsible for the miscarriage, and he told Jane that the nanny’s claims were false.

But the Second Gentleman allegedly confessed to Jane that he paid Naylor a settlement of around $80,000, and had the nanny sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA).

Emhoff was previously dubbed by Democrats as a ‘wife guy’ and a ‘mensch’, a Yiddish term for an honorable, kind man. He has also spoken out in media interviews about being an ally to women and against toxic masculinity.

In a fawning interview on Sunday, MSNBC host and former Biden White House press secretary Jen Psaki told Emhoff that he ‘reshaped the perception of masculinity’ – despite his admitted affair with his daughter’s nanny and teacher.

‘I’ve always been like this,’ Emhoff said to Psaki. ‘To me, it’s the right thing to do, support women.’

These allegations strike to the heart of his benevolent image, promoted by the Harris presidential campaign.

Jane’s friends said she was given tickets by wealthy friends to go to the Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR) Gala Dinner, an elite charity auction filled with top celebrities and Hollywood executives, held on May 24, 2012 at the Hotel du Cap in Antibes, near Cannes in Southern France.

Attendees that year included model Cara Delevingne, actors Antonio Banderas and Alec Baldwin, designer Karl Lagerfeld, singer Kylie Minogue, actress Kirsten Dunst, socialite Paris Hilton, and top amfAR supporter, now-disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein.

The friends said Jane brought her then boyfriend, Emhoff, as a plus one.

One of Jane’s friends, a top New York businessman, said he was at home getting ready for bed that night when he got an unexpected phone call from her.

‘It was hard to hear her because she was sobbing,’ he said. ‘She told me she was with a guy and he hit her.

‘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.

‘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.’

He said he still had a ‘vivid’ memory of the troubling conversation from 12 years ago.

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

‘It was something like 3am. 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.

‘She slapped him back.

‘My impression is that he had a lot to drink. She was sobbing [on the phone afterwards], but she wasn’t slurring her words.

‘She told me that she broke up with him that night.’

A second friend, another female New York attorney, said Jane told her about the alleged attack at the time – and said it came out of nowhere.

‘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.

‘She put her hand on the valet’s shoulder, and as she was talking to him, Doug comes up.

‘She said he turned her around by her right shoulder, and she was completely caught off guard. 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.’

The three friends said that as Jane tried to leave following the alleged assault, Emhoff forced his way into the cab with her.

‘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*** 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] told me she was so embarrassed. She couldn’t believe he is the person that he is, and that it turned into this trailer trash moment.

‘It woke her up about the self-delusion she was having, explaining away the teacher story. She realized he was bad news. This was the first time she saw his ugly side.

‘She said she called [her male businessman friend] because she wanted Doug to see her on the phone, telling somebody. She felt that would afford her some protection.’

The third friend, a female top company executive, said Jane told her the story in 2018.

‘I don’t know if it was an aggressive slap or a punch, but it was something that I know she would never forget, and something that would end a relationship immediately,’ the executive said.

‘She had never been hit in her life. [Jane] is a gorgeous, strong woman and you would never expect somebody to hit her.’

The executive said Jane told her that Emhoff was unapologetic about the alleged abuse the next day.

‘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.’

The executive said Jane believed Emhoff meant that ‘now they were even’.

‘She said it was hurtful at the time,’ the attorney said. ‘But she said she didn’t want to feel like a victim.’

The friends said Emhoff ended the trip early to return to LA for his daughter Ella’s 13th birthday on May 29, and that he and Jane never saw each other again.

A copy of Jane and Emhoff’s itinerary the friends shared with DailyMail.com shows a layover flight from Newark, New Jersey to Nice, France on May 22, 2012. Their return flight from Milan, Italy was originally scheduled for May 29.

A May 17, 2012 email provided by the friends, written by Jane to one of her fellow amfAR attendees, gives the location of the hotel in Nice the couple stayed at and said that ‘we have to leave a day earlier than you so that Doug can be back in LA for his daughters birthday.’

The executive said that Jane described how Emhoff ‘love bombed’ her from their first date after connecting on dating site Match.com, quickly throwing himself into an intimate relationship with Jane and giving her the impression he wanted to marry her.

‘She had met his parents, his kids,’ the female executive said. ‘Prior to this he had been making comments about marriage with [Jane].’

The attorney friend said Jane told her Emhoff had even introduced her to his son Cole on their first date in March 2012.

‘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.

‘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 story appears similar to Harris’s description of how Emhoff quickly dived into his relationship with her in 2013, emailing her the morning after their first date with his availability for the next few months.

‘I’m too old to play games or hide the ball,’ Emhoff wrote in the email, according to Harris’s 2019 book, The Truths We Hold. 

‘I really like you, and I want to see if we can make this work.’

Harris wrote that Emhoff introduced her to his children after ‘about two months’, and they married in August 2014.

Jane’s friends said that just weeks after her first date with Emhoff, he invited her to visit him in Los Angeles in April 2012.

‘Doug flew her out,’ said the attorney. ‘She was there for a week.

‘He was interested in buying a new house. He put on a big show about how important it was for [Jane] to have some sort of say in the house he purchased.’

Emhoff was divorcing his wife Kerstin at the time, and while Jane was visiting he made a confession about the reason for the split, the friends said.

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

‘She told me they were driving, and she asked him.

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

The executive said the nanny claimed ‘he had been aggressive with her, shouting or whatever, to the degree that she lost the baby.’

‘He did it rather matter-of-factly, not apologizing or saying he screwed up, but just like it was any other conversation,’ she said.

‘Not, ‘I’ve got to tell you something’, ‘this isn’t who I am’ or ‘I’m embarrassed about it’. There was no shame or regret.’

The attorney friend said Emhoff suggested the nanny was making up the claims, and that Jane wanted to believe him at the time.

‘[Jane] said she entertained what he was telling her, that the teacher wasn’t really pregnant, that she was doing a shakedown,’ the lawyer said.

Sources who were close to Naylor during 2008 and 2009 told DailyMail.com that Doug did get her pregnant, and that she did not end up having the baby.

One source, unconnected to Jane, told DailyMail.com last month that Doug had some kind of financial settlement with Naylor.

Jane’s businessman friend said Jane told him Emhoff confessed to settling with the nanny for about $80,000 and having her sign an NDA.

‘The nanny believed that Doug caused the baby to be lost. Maybe it was just lawyers making threats,’ the businessman friend said. 

‘But Doug had to pay something like $80,000. [Naylor] signed an NDA. But Doug was telling this to [Jane] in detail.’

Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) records obtained by DailyMail.com under the California Public Records Act show that police were called to a house where Naylor was living around the time she was allegedly pregnant, at 8:14pm on June 28, 2009.

The callout was given priority level three, which is a ‘life threatening emergency, lights and sirens on.’

LAPD refused to give further information or the names of the individuals involved in the incident.

The attorney friend said Jane tried to put aside her misgivings about Emhoff after his alleged confession about Naylor.

‘She bought the flights [for amfAR] the week before he told her about the impregnated teacher,’ she said. 

‘It was a serious red flag. But the trip was booked. He came to New York and they flew to Nice.’

The friends said that Jane thought nobody would care about her story, until Harris’ rise to power made Emhoff a notable public figure – at which point she became afraid of retaliation if she ever spoke out.

But they said they believed it was in the public interest to expose Emhoff’s alleged hypocrisy.

‘He’s holding himself out to be something he absolutely is not. And that’s bulls***,’ said the female executive. ‘I feel like people should know who their leaders really are.

‘[Jane] was always leaning Democratic. I have always voted Democratic. If anything I would like to tell a story on the other side. But this is the truth,’ she added.

‘He’s a really bad guy. To hold him out as a supporter of women is just disgusting.

‘Unfortunately, you’ve got a nut in Trump, and then you’ve got not a good choice on the other side.

‘People can make their own choice once they know. But I feel like transparency is the best disinfectant for bad behavior.’

Emhoff did not respond to DailyMail.com’s request for comment.