A former campaign staffer for Trump-endorsed congressional candidate Jackson Lahmeyer says their relationship became physical, contradicting his assertion that their interactions were limited to flirtatious text exchanges.
In an exclusive interview with the Daily Mail, Caitlin Simmons Key — a former Miss Oklahoma USA — said she and Lahmeyer, a megachurch pastor, kissed several times while working closely together during the spring campaign.
Key also shared a text message she says came from Lahmeyer, a married father of five, that read: “I enjoyed those lips.”
The Republican primary race in Oklahoma’s 1st Congressional District, scheduled for Tuesday, was thrown into turmoil after a Daily Mail investigation published allegations that Lahmeyer, 34, had sent flirtatious messages to Key, who worked as a fundraiser for his campaign.
Key now says those messages did not fully reflect the extent of their relationship.
“The truth is there is more to the story,” said Key, 40, a single mother. “I showed mercy on him by not releasing it. If he wants to further discredit me, he’s going to have a lot of explaining to do about why he continues to lie.”
‘I am not the only person who knows things,’ Key adds. ‘And you should stop now before there’s nothing else to hide.’
Lahmeyer declined to comment on the record for the original story, instead issuing a statement on Facebook blasting ‘a distorted story from a British Tabloid.’ He called it a private matter already ‘dealt with privately between me and my wife, Kendra, through counsel and prayer with God and spiritual advisors.’ Lahmeyer admitted only to ‘crossing a boundary line through text messaging.’
Former Miss Oklahoma USA Caitlin Simmons Key tells the Daily Mail: ‘The truth is there is more to the story. I showed mercy on him by not releasing it. If he wants to further discredit me, he’s going to have a lot of explaining to do about why he continues to lie.’
Former Miss Oklahoma USA Caitlin Simmons Key tells the Daily Mail in an exclusive interview that she and Lahmeyer shared several kisses as they worked closely together in the heat of the campaign and now reveals a text from the married father-of-five, telling her: ‘I enjoyed those lips.’ (left) Lahmeyer’s carefully worded statement disguised a frantic effort behind the scenes after he canceled his sermon at Sheridan Church on Sunday, calling Key multiple times and texting her demanding answers (right texts to Key)
The congressional candidate with his five children and his wife Kendra
Former Miss Oklahoma USA Caitlin Simmons Key tells the Daily Mail in an exclusive interview that she and Lahmeyer shared several kisses as they worked closely together in the heat of the campaign this spring
Roger Stone, left, speaks alongside the congressional candidate and Kendra in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 2021
But the carefully worded statement disguised a frantic effort behind the scenes after he canceled his sermon at Sheridan Church on Sunday, calling Key multiple times and texting her for answers.
Trump doubled down regardless, posting a second endorsement of his ‘MAGA Warrior’ on Truth Social Monday. Lahmeyer’s campaign fired off the statement in a text to supporters, casting the candidate as the victim of a ‘Deep State’ smear by ‘career politicians.’
The scandal has gone off like a bomb in a race that was, until last week, Lahmeyer’s to lose. His odds on betting market Polymarket plunged from 87 percent Friday to 56 percent Monday as the Daily Mail’s story spread.
Rivals are knifing him. Kim David, one of ten Republicans in the field, said Lahmeyer ‘lacks the character and judgment to serve us in Congress,’ urging voters to back her instead Tuesday.
Whoever wins the primary will be the heavy favorite in November in the deep-red Tulsa-area district which has been in GOP hands without interruption since 1987.
Key, who says she never wanted the spotlight, is unsparing about the way Lahmeyer’s camp has tried to reframe the story since it broke.
‘First, I was not paid by anyone to tell this story. In fact, I initially declined to comment because this isn’t the kind of attention anyone wants,’ she says.
‘The story that was published is not the full story. The difference is that what was left out doesn’t help him, it makes the situation more troubling for him, not less.’
Caitlin Simmons Key on a trip to Chicago
‘You are a home wrecking whore. Did you enjoy ruining our family?’ Lahmeyer’s wife, Kendra, wrote to Key on May 9: ‘He has 5 kids’
The texts shared with the Daily Mail trace an intimacy that deepened through the spring. From a black-tie party at Mar-a-Lago, he messaged her selfies and called her ‘super thin and very cute’; when Key asked why he was texting her from the gala, he replied: ‘I like texting you lol’
Lahmeyer, Key and Republican operative Roger Stone
The pastor’s statement, she argues, dodges everything that matters.
‘His statement spends a lot of time attacking the publication, questioning motives, and suggesting political agendas. What it doesn’t do is address the actual content of the messages, the relationship that existed, or the conduct that led us here,’ she says.
Key does not pretend to be a saint. ‘I’ve never claimed to be perfect. I think the whole world knows at this point that I’ve messed up a lot,’ she says. ‘And I knew going public would likely turn a lot of that attention onto me rather than onto the important point of electing someone who is dishonest.’
The lurid headlines, she insists, never scared her off. ‘I knew that plenty of people would come out of the woodwork with headlines of their own, claiming they knew this or that about me. People have their own agendas and that’s something I’m just not surprised by.’
‘This was not a decision impulsively made, but one I had to make peace with knowing that I would be dragged through the mud. Lastly, I knew what the salaciousness of the headline would be, and I was OK with that because I knew that if people actually read the story they would find out what was actually going on,’ she says.
Then comes the warning shot as she seizes on Lahmeyer’s own admission that the narrative didn’t tell the entire story.
‘There’s something else that Jackson is right about. The narrative is distorted, and there is more to this story. And if Jackson believes the public deserves more context, I welcome that conversation. There are facts and circumstances that have still not been discussed publicly and he knows exactly what I’m referring to.’
What stung most, Key adds, was watching her account recast as a partisan hit job in the campaign’s text blast to supporters.
Caitlin Simmons Key, a 40-year-old single mom who worked as a fundraiser for Jackson Lahmeyer’s campaign, told the Daily Mail that she and the congressional candidate shared inappropriate texts before his wife learned of the relationship on the eve of Mother’s Day
He sent a selfie from his room at a Hyatt Place and floated a ‘late invite.’ She declined. Key says she was the one urging realism about his marriage. ‘And at some point – if u need to get divorced. Then ok,’ she texted him. His reply: ‘Not right now tho lol’
Key denied being romantically involved in a text message to Kendra. ‘If he feels differently towards me, that is nothing I have control of. I am dating someone!’ she said
Kendra Lahmeyer’s furious texts to Caitlin Simmons Key
‘My eyes continue to open more and more by the hour,’ she says. ‘Now a troubling text blast has gone out, referring to my story as “Deep State.” While he may still have the endorsement of powerful figures, it’s the voters here at home who are deciding whether he’s fit for the job.’
Key urges people not to vote for Lahmeyer, stating that the only reason he wants to go to Washington is to ‘make all this money.’
She closes with a stinging final warning as she flatly rejects his framing. ‘I can assure you, I’m not Deep State. So just stop. Stop before there’s nothing left to hide from.’
Lahmeyer declined to comment to Key’s latest revelations on Monday.
Key first met Lahmeyer in 2022, when he was a political newcomer mounting a long-shot Republican primary challenge to Senator James Lankford.
She was active on the Oklahoma conservative scene; he was the pastor who had refused to shut his church during COVID. She signed on to raise money.
Lahmeyer lost in a landslide, but the two stayed in touch and, she says, grew closer as she went through a bruising divorce.
‘Eventually, the conversations crossed the line of probably what most people would consider appropriate for a married man and a single woman,’ she said.
Key was active on the Oklahoma conservative scene
‘Kendra wanted to recover all of our messages. I deleted them,’ Lahmeyer wrote to Key. ‘I told her I got way too close to you and became emotionally attached. She lost it on me’
Key says she went through her phone and deleted thousands of messages before abandoning the effort. She ultimately sent Lahmeyer nothing and kept everything. ‘I’m not doing this bullshit,’ she texted Lahmeyer. ‘She’s not ruining my future bc of her fears. Nothing is going on!’
Lahmeyer cast the fallout as his alone to absorb, apologizing on May 10
In a text when Key mentioned struggling with rent, Lahmeyer answered: ‘I got you’
As his national profile climbed, he founded Pastors for Trump and was brought into the president’s new White House Faith Office. The texts trace an intimacy that deepened through the spring.
From a black-tie party at Mar-a-Lago, he sent her selfies and called her ‘super thin and very cute’; he floated a ‘late invite’ from a hotel room. She declined.
When she mentioned struggling with rent, he answered: ‘I got you.’
When she pushed him to be realistic about his life as a married pastor, he turned possessive: ‘I can still be jealous.’
She put it to him bluntly: ‘U r in love with me and we don’t even have sex.’ His reply: ‘Well… hahah. I’m a fan of you how about that lol.’
‘Nobody knew how close we were,’ Key says. ‘Not one person on the planet besides me and him.’
It was Trump who lit the fuse. The day after the president’s first endorsement on May 6, Key shared it on Facebook, vouching that she knew Lahmeyer and his family well. Within hours his wife Kendra had discovered the texts in his phone.
‘You are a home wrecking whore. Did you enjoy ruining our family?’ Kendra wrote to Key on the eve of Mother’s Day, May 9. ‘He has 5 kids.’
Key was swiftly cut off by Lahmeyer, she says, yet cash payments which do not appear in the campaign’s FEC filings kept coming, as recently as the start of June, which she believes were meant to keep her quiet
Key and former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani who endorsed Lahmeyer
What followed, Key says, was a scramble to contain the fallout, with Lahmeyer coaching her to delete the evidence.
‘Ok send me a screen shot of our last several texts and I’ll show which ones to remove,’ he texted on May 11.
She says she deleted thousands of messages before abandoning the effort, sending him nothing and keeping everything.
Then he cut her off and went, in her words, ‘absolute ghost.’
Yet the cash kept coming, $500 a week she says was sent by campaign manager John Killian through CashApp, payments that do not appear in the campaign’s FEC filings.
‘They think that five hundred dollars a week is going to keep me quiet,’ she says.
