By Francisco Alvarado www.floridabulldog.org
Jason Miller, the Washington, D.C. lobbyist and spokesman for Donald Trump’s three presidential campaigns, is accused of criminally threatening a state judge who consequently stepped down from presiding over his paternity case in Miami-Dade County.
For nearly a decade, Miller has been battling Arlene “AJ” Delgado, the 2016 Trump campaign’s Hispanic outreach director, over how much he should pay in child support for their 7-year-old son, William. Miller, who is married, had an affair with Delgado in 2016. Their liaison bitterly ended shortly after she got pregnant. The case has gone through a carousel of judges in three judicial districts due to conflicts of interest and accusations of bias until it landed before Miami-Dade Circuit Court Judge Spencer Multack in 2021. He is the ninth judge on the case.
Since then, Multack has rejected multiple motions by Delgado to disqualify himself due to alleged bias for Miller, including the judge building up his profile for his 2022 bid to snag a then-open seat on the Third District Court of Appeal. In his application, Multack included a scathing ruling he made against Delgado in the paternity case, hoping it would get the attention of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who makes the appointments.
Late last month, the Third District Court of Appeal Judicial Nominating Commission announced that it was once again accepting candidates to fill a new vacancy that Multack has coveted. Judge Kevin Emas is retiring.
On Feb 1, however, Miller took to X to announce to his 625,000 followers that he was actively seeking to torpedo Judge Multack’s chances:
“I am actively opposing Florida Judge Spencer Multack’s application to get a promotion to Florida’s Third District Court Of Appeal and I will be activating EVERYONE I know and EVERY resource I have to stop his bid.”
Multack abruptly filed an order recusing himself from Miller’s case “four hours” after the post, according to a letter sent to New York U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres, who is presiding over a related sex-discrimination case.
The Feb. 11 letter was sent by New York attorney Thomas Giuffra.
“They were very real threats of professional harm made by a person who has extensive political power and the ability to follow through on them,” he wrote. “Mr. Miller is a very well-connected member of the Republican establishment with close ties to President Trump and his inner circle.”
While Miller was named White House Communications Director in December 2016 for the then-incoming Trump administration, he withdrew from the position before starting after Delgado went public with their affair. Miller cited a desire to focus on his family. He was a spokesman for Trump during his 2016, 2020 and 2024 campaigns.ns.
A CASE LIKE A ‘CARL HIAASEN NOVEL’
Giuffra noted that in Florida it’s a first-degree misdemeanor to threaten or harass a judge to influence a case.
“Despite this shocking development, nothing has been done in the Florida courts other than to assign a new judge to the family court case,” Giuffra wrote. “In the interim, Mr. Miller’s attorney, Mr. (Sandy) Fox, sought new hearings with the newly assigned judge and even requested a trial date last week prior to Ms. Delgado’s discovery of the threatening tweet. It is very obvious that Mr. Miller has no interest in resolving the family court case. Furthermore, since his costs are seemingly being absorbed by several PACs, he has no incentive to do so.”
Federal election finance reports show that the Republican National Committee paid Miller’s lobbying firm, SHW Partners, $150,000 last year. Another PAC, Make America Great Again, has paid roughly $1 million to Schulman Bhattacharya since 2024 when the law firm took over representation of the Trump campaign in the federal case. In January, Schulman was acquired by Hughes Hubbard & Reed. Jeffrey Gavenman, the Trump campaign’s lead attorney, did not respond to an email request for comment.
Attorney Giuffra also alluded to the sometimes bizarre twists in Miami’s MAGA paternity case file. “Much of what I reviewed seemed more like a Carl Hiaasen novel as opposed to the dry pleadings and proceedings that I expected,” he said.
Jason Miller, as he has before, offered a schoolyard taunt when asked for comment by Florida Bulldog, “Hey loser, you’re a blogger and not a real reporter.”
Delgado, who represents herself in the paternity case, declined to comment.
In addition to the paternity case, Delgado has a pair of lawsuits pending in New York tied to her dalliance with Miller.
In federal court, she is suing the 2016 Trump campaign and two former senior staffers, Sean Spicer and Reince Priebus, for sexual discrimination. Delgado, who has become a Never Trumper Republican, alleges that she was stripped of her responsibilities and frozen out of a White House job after she got pregnant. Spicer and Priebus served as press secretary and chief of staff, respectively, in the first Trump administration.
The second complaint, filed in New York County Supreme Court, is against Miller, alleging he subjected her to a “cycle of coercion, rape, sexual assault, abuse, battery, sexual harassment and sex trafficking” while she reported to him. New York-based lawyers Timothy Hyland and Guiffra represent Delgado in the federal case and state complaint, respectively.
HOPE FOR PROGRESS ‘SABOTAGED’
Judge Torres has pushed the parties toward a global settlement that also encompasses Delgado’s New York state-law claims and the Miami paternity case, Giuffra’s letter states. At Torres’ direction, Delgado’s New York legal team made repeated attempts to schedule a mediation with Sandy Fox, attorney for Jason Miller in the paternity case. They were unsuccessful “due to the intransigence of Mr. Fox,” who has a history of “abusive interactions” with Delgado, Giuffra wrote.
According to the letter, Torres directed Hyland, Delgado’s other lawyer, to produce Fox’s “offensive communications” and proof to support her allegation that various political action committees were funding Miller’s defense in the paternity case.
“Mr. Fox refused to engage with Mr. Hyland to discuss the mediation and inexplicably demanded that all communications come directly from Ms. Delgado,” Giuffra wrote. “This effort at ‘calming the waters’ was not well received by Mr. Fox for reasons known only to him.”
Fox did not respond to an emailed request for comment.
Judge Torres took the unusual step of contacting Multack directly to help facilitate the mediation due to the impasse, and on Jan. 30 the judges had a “productive call,” the letter states. Indeed, Multack immediately scheduled a status conference in the paternity case for Feb. 9.
“We were optimistic that with the intervention of the court there was a chance of resolution of all three cases,” Giuffra wrote. But Miller’s X post sabotaged any hope of progress.
Last week, Delgado filed a motion requesting that Miami-Dade Chief Judge Ariana Fajardo Orshan, who served as South Florida U.S. Attorney in the first Trump administration, assign the paternity case to another circuit.
“The most recent action [by Jason Miller] sends a clear message to members of the judiciary of the 11th Circuit, namely that if they fail to ‘look out for the interests of the father’ in this litigation, he will unleash all of his political influence on them and harm them, either politically or in their career,” Delgado wrote. “It is shocking to think that this would occur.”
In the past, every judge in the state courts in Miami-Dade and Broward were recused from the Miller/Delgado paternity case. How any judge in those circuits is able now to preside in the case is something of a mystery.
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