Rep. Van Taylor’s (R-TX) former mistress Tania Joya has spoken publicly for the first time about the affair that doomed Taylor’s re-election campaign. Joya claimed to the Daily Mail that Taylor was “turned on” by her past as an ISIS jihadist. “For me it was making love, but for him it was just sex. Whenever he was in town, four, five times times a night, he was all over me,” she said. “There were no flowers, no gifts. He didn’t take me on a single date in eight months. He was like, no, I’m too famous, everywhere I go I get harassed.” Joya claimed Taylor occasionally gifted her cash, making her feel as if he was paying her for sex. Joya married Texan Muslim convert and moved to Syria in 2013 but she says she became disillusioned and escaped back to the U.S. where she re-married and became an advocate against extremism. She had an affair with Taylor from October 2020 to June 2021 after meeting him through her advocacy work. “One person said to me, you’re his booty call. I didn’t really know what that was because I’d been MIA for ten years in the Middle East,” she said.
