Trump Transition Co-Chair Sued For Sex Trafficking Young Boys

Linda McMahon, wife of former WWF CEO and accused sex trafficker Vince McMahon, has been named alongside her husband in allegations of child sex trafficking in a new lawsuit filed in late October. One might assume this is particularly uncomfortable for Donald Trump, who chose McMahon, who has unsuccessfully run as the Republican nominee for one of Connecticuit’s Senate seats, as co-chair of his transition team.

“We have record national debt, we’ve never seen anything like it before,” Trump recently said in an appearance on UniVision. “We were getting ready to start paying down debt. And then we got hit with a thing called COVID, or the ‘China Virus,’ and that had to be the focus.”

“We needed to help businesses stay in business and if we didn’t do the job we did — Linda McMahon did a great job, Small Business Association — if we didn’t do the job that we did, you wouldn’t have any companies [right now],” Trump adds. “You would be in a depression like in 1929.”

The McMahon family and the WWE have been accused of sexual misconduct before. However, after Trump’s win in the 2024 presidential race, Linda McMahon was named co-chair of Trump’s transition team — well after the allegations against the McMahons were known. NBC News reports:

The suit, filed in Baltimore County, Maryland, accuses McMahon and his wife, Linda McMahon, and World Wrestling Entertainment and its parent company, TKO Holdings, of allowing the “open, rampant abuse” of so-called “ring boys” as young as 12 who acted as assistants to ringside announcer Melvin Phillips Jr. in the 1980s and 1990s.

TKO and WWE did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Phillips died in 2012.

The McMahons deny the allegations. Their attorney, Jessica Rosenberg, told NBC that the claims are false. “More than 30 years ago, the columnist Phil Mushnick tried to make headlines with these same false claims,” Rosenberg says. “Those allegations were never proven and ultimately became the subject of a defamation lawsuit against Mr. Mushnick.”

The lawsuit says five unidentified victims were assaulted at hotels, dressing rooms, and other places after Phillips “lured and manipulated” boys 12 and 13-year-old boys with promises of meeting their favorite wrestlers. Phillips would, according to the suit, film his abuse of the children.

The suit says Linda and Vince McMahon were aware of Phillips’ “peculiar and unnatural interest” but did nothing to stop it. McMahon fired Phillips in 1988, but rehired him six weeks later after telling him to “steer away from kids.”

Linda McMahon served as Trump’s Administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration. She quit that job to work for a pro-Trump super PAC.

This is yet another element of scandal added to a Trump transition already plagued by issues surrounding Elon Musk, and Robert F Kennedy Jr. It is currently unknown if any of these scandals will be resolved before the transition.