Katie Hill paid ‘campaign bonus’ to alleged male lover

Democratic Rep. Katie Hill, left, with Graham Kelly (Facebook)

By Isabel Vincent
New York Post

The married California Congresswoman under fire for her steamy “throupling” with an aide paid a male staffer she allegedly slept with the highest bonus she doled out to aides working on her campaign, federal documents show.

California Rep. Katie Hill, who is under probe by the House Ethics Committee for the reported affair with the staffer, Graham Kelly, also continued to pay a female campaign worker she and her husband were romantically involved until at least last month.

Kelly, the legislative director in the Democratic Congresswoman’s Washington DC, office, received a $5,100 “2018 election bonus” on April 27, according to Federal Election Commission records.

Kelly was one of only four campaign workers who received bonuses, which started at $2,700. His was the highest.

The openly bisexual Hill admitted last week to an “inappropriate” relationship with the female campaign worker, who allegedly engaged in the three-way affair with Hill and her now estranged husband Kenny Heslep. Hill has said she ended the throuple over the summer.

Hill paid the woman, Morgan Desjardins, 24, more than $14,000 as a campaign consultant since April. Those funds came in addition to more than $50,000 Desjardins earned after she started working for Hill in 2017, federal records show.

Left to right: Graham Kelly, Katie Hill, and Morgan Desjardins — Facebook

The kinky allegations, along with racy photos and text messages, were made public last weekend by RedState, a conservative blog. One of the photos shows Hill and Desjardins, who was identified by the Daily Mail last week, locked in a passionate kiss. The newspaper published nude pictures of Hill combing Desjardins’ hair, holding a bong and sporting an Iron Cross tattoo on her bikini area. Hill’s lawyers have denied the tattoo is related to any Nazi imagery.

Hill, 32, has vehemently denied she was romantically involved with Kelly, 31. Heslep first made the accusation on a social media post last summer when he filed for divorce in Los Angeles Superior Court.

Hill has been “sleeping with her [male] finance director for the past year at least,” Heslep posted to his now-deleted Facebook account earlier this year, in a reference to Kelly, RedState reported.

“The fact is I am going through a divorce from an abusive husband who seems determined to try to humiliate me,” Hill said in a letter to her constituents last week.

Kelly raised more than $8 million for Hill’s 2018 campaigns. He began in May 2017 during a primary contest in which Hill faced three other Democratic challengers, and then went on to work on the general-election campaign.

In the early days of her campaign, Hill worked with Kelly and a small group of campaign workers in Kelly’s California apartment, according to “She’s Running,” a 2018 VICE documentary series about the race.

House ethics rules say members of Congress cannot engage in sexual relationships with a subordinate employee.

Calls to Hill’s office were not returned last week.

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https://nypost.com/2019/10/26/katie-hill-paid-campaign-bonus-to-alleged-male-lover/