Rumors about Arizona Congressman Greg Stanton being gay have swirled around political cloakrooms for years, but on Wednesday they spilled out of the closet during a hearing of the U.S. House Foreign Service Committee.
The rumor was mentioned during the testimony of Senior Advisor for the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), Kari Lake, at the hearing entitled Spies, Lies, and Mismanagement: Examining the U.S. Agency for Global Media’s Downfall.
Lake, a long-time mainstream media journalist and former Phoenix news anchor, appeared before the U.S. House Foreign Service Committee to discuss the widespread firings across the Agency in fulfillment of President Trump’s Executive Order titled Continuing the Reduction of the Federal Bureaucracy, which directed the elimination of all non-statutory functions and to reduce the Agency to its statutory minimum.
Stanton, best known for appearing at another hearing during the COVID pandemic from a yacht while Americans across the country were largely stuck at home in isolation, began his questioning criticizing Lake for “eroding Americans’ soft power around the globe.”
“Your job is to tell the people of the world the truth about America,” Stanton said. “And because of that, there is a more fundamental issue that I want to address today, and that is character.”
He then launched into a diatribe about truthfulness about elections, accusing Lake of lying about the conduct of elections. Lake lost a gubernatorial and senatorial race, both of which she questioned in public and the courts.
Despite being admonished for his attack on Lake by Chair Rep. Issa, Stanton accused Lake of being a “liar” and a “loser.”
Lake responded when Stanton yielded his time back to the chair, “That was complete insanity. Can I respond to that because that was complete insanity. I wish I could yield back the last five minutes of my life, and I want to apologize to the people of Arizona that we have somebody who’s representing the folks in one of our great parts of the Valley that doesn’t care about the integrity of our elections. But you weren’t here, you came in late, and we were talking about USAGM today, the Agency for Global Media, and how they can put out absolute, abject lies, and we can’t control any… We have no say over what the editorial content is, and I would hope that you would not be okay with that. They could literally put out a lie about anybody here, and I know you’ve been a victim of that. I know you’ve been a victim. I remember the stories about you when they said you had gay lover, and those were going out.”
“Mr. Chair,” Stanton interrupted. “I hope you honor what you just gave as a caution to everyone, and I move her words be stricken.”
Lake continued undaunted, “To tell you that those kind of lies, and you said they were lies, those kinds of lies can be broadcast today on VOA, and you can’t pick up the phone, Representative Stanton, and call them and say, ‘hey, you’re putting out lies about me.’ You would not be able to do that because they would sue you for breaking the firewall. So, lies are being told on Voice of America; it’s inappropriate. You’ve been subjected to lies that you said were lies about you in the media before, and how would you like those lies were put on Voice in America right now? Because they could do it, and you couldn’t do a thing about it. You couldn’t stop it. You couldn’t stop all those lies that you said were said about you if they went on Voice of America today. You’d have to sit and take it.”
Lake explained that Stanton, who became the subject of the gay rumor mill after the suicide of one of his aides years ago, would “have to take it,” due to “firewall language” that Congress put into the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) makes it impossible for Agency management to “prevent biased, anti-American, or rogue reporting.”
I wish Congressman @gregstantonaz took Election Integrity as seriously as he does his extracurricular activities. pic.twitter.com/ygc4eujjoO
— Kari Lake (@KariLake) June 26, 2025
The presence of the firewall is such that, during questioning by Congressman Abe Hamadeh, Lake revealed that the Chinese Communist Party has more say over what is broadcast by Voice of America than a U.S. government official.