Sister of slain army private and others speak out after alleged 2020 Trump remark | Donald Trump | The Guardian

Atlantic report claims Trump disputed funeral costs he offered to pay for Vanessa Guillén, a murdered US soldier

A row has broken out in the aftermath of a report from the Atlantic that claims Donald Trump refused to cover the funeral costs of a soldier who was murdered at a Texas military base in 2020.

The deceased woman’s sister came to the defense of the former US president amid a wave of backlash against Trump.

The Atlantic story, written by Jeffrey Goldberg, the magazine’s editor-in-chief, alleges that, in 2020, then US president Trump got angry about a $60,000 bill he received from Vanessa Guillén’s family for her funeral, which he had previously offered to pay.

Trump allegedly said, “It doesn’t cost 60,000 bucks to bury a fucking Mexican,” and then told his chief of staff Mark Meadows not to pay it.

Guillén was a 20-year-old army private when she disappeared from the Fort Hood military base in Killeen, Texas, after telling friends and family she had been sexually harassed on the base. Her remains were found around two months later, dismembered and burned.

Prosecutors said that she was killed by another soldier, Aaron Robinson, who fatally shot himself when confronted by police.

Robinson’s girlfriend, Cecily Aguilar, was sentenced to 30 years behind bars for her role in Guillén’s murder. She pleaded guilty to one count of accessory to murder and three counts of false statement or representation.

After Guillén’s remains were found, Trump met with Guillén’s family at the White House in July 2020 and promised to help them pay for Vanessa’s funeral.

The new allegations in the Atlantic on Tuesday cite two people who say that Trump questioned the funeral cost in December 2020 and made the derogatory remark, and the family never received any money from the former president.

Through a spokesperson quoted in the Atlantic article, Trump has denied the accusations.

Later on Tuesday, after the Atlantic report was published, Vanessa’s sister Mayra Guillén criticized the story on social media.

“I don’t appreciate how you are exploiting my sister’s death for politics – hurtful & disrespectful to the important changes she made for service members,” she wrote, referring to a bipartisan federal law named after Vanessa, which requires, among other things, that sexual harassment complaints involving service members be sent to an independent investigator, which was signed into law in 2021 by the Biden administration.

In her statement, Mayra added: “President Donald Trump did nothing but show respect to my family & Vanessa. In fact, I voted for President Trump today.”

Natalie Khawam, an attorney for the Guillén family, also disparaged the Atlantic piece and the author online.

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“After having dealt with hundreds of reporters in my legal career, this is unfortunately the first time I have to go on record and call out Jeffrey Goldberg@the Atlantic: not only did he misrepresent our conversation but he outright LIED in HIS sensational story,” Khawam said. “More importantly, he used and exploited my clients, and Vanessa Guillen’s murder … for cheap political gain.”

She continued: “As everyone knows, not only did Trump support our military, he also invited my clients to the Oval Office and supported the I Am Vanessa Guillen bill too.”

Meadows also reacted to the piece, saying: “Any suggestion that President Trump disparaged Ms. Guillen or refused to pay for her funeral expenses is absolutely false,” adding that Trump was “nothing but kind, gracious, and wanted to make sure that the military and the U.S. government did right by Vanessa Guillen and her family”.

The Democratic vice-presidential candidate, Tim Walz, who served in the army national guard, also spoke out about the alleged comments made by the former president.

“Don’t be the frog in the boiling water and think this is OK,” the Minnesota governor said at a rally on Tuesday, referring to the allegations. “As a 24-year veteran of our military, that makes me sick as hell, and it should make you sick.”

Elsewhere on Tuesday evening, Texas congressman Joaquin Castro weighed in on X, writing of the alleged remarks: “Trump has nothing but contempt for Latinos, women, and our servicemembers. This man doesn’t give a damn about us.”

The Atlantic story also alleges that Trump once said that he needed “the kind of generals that Hitler had” during private conversations in the White House, according to two people who say they heard him, which was also substantiated by Trump’s former White House chief of staff John Kelly.

Trump’s spokesperson has denied that the former president said this, calling it “absolutely false”.