A family attorney and the sister of slain Texas soldier Vanessa Guillen both dismissed a report in the Atlantic Tuesday alleging that former President Donald Trump refused to pay for the Army specialist’s funeral and disparaged her ethnicity.
The piece, written by the magazine’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg, claims Trump fumed about a $60,000 bill he received from Guillen’s family for her funeral during a December 2020 Oval Office meeting – allegedly telling aides that “It doesn’t cost 60,000 bucks to bury a f—king Mexican.”
“Don’t pay it!” Trump ordered his then chief of staff Mark Meadows, after previously telling the Guillen family he would assist with Vanessa’s funeral expenses, according to Goldberg.
Mayra Guillen, Vanessa’s sister, slammed the Atlantic report as “hurtful & disrespectful,” and indicated that the former president treated her family with “respect” in the aftermath of sister’s brutal killing.
“Wow,” Mayra wrote on X, in response to Goldberg’s reporting. “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.”
“President Donald Trump did nothing but show respect to my family & Vanessa,” she added. “In fact, I voted for President Trump today.”
Natalie Khawam, an attorney for the Guillen family, accused the Atlantic editor of lying in the piece.
“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 wrote on X.
“More importantly, he used and exploited my clients, and Vanessa Guillen’s murder… for cheap political gain,” she added.
Khawam called the “timing” of Goldberg’s report “quite suspicious.”
“[T]his supposed conversation that Trump had would have occurred over 4 years ago!” the attorney noted. “Why a story about it now?!”
“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,” Khawam continued. “I’m grateful we were successful in getting bipartisan support of the I Am Vanessa Guillen Act, and because of everyone’s hard work and efforts our service members now have more protections and rights while serving our country.”
Goldberg claims in his piece that Khawam told him “she sent the bill [for Vanessa’s funeral] to the White House, but no money was ever received by the family from Trump.”
Meadows also dismissed Goldberg’s reporting.
“Any suggestion that President Trump disparaged Ms. Guillen or refused to pay for her funeral expenses is absolutely false,” he wrote on X. “He 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.”
Vanessa Guillen, 20, was killed at Fort Cavazos, formerly Fort Hood near Killeen, Texas in 2020 by a fellow soldier Aaron Robinson, who committed suicide following a confrontation with police after Guillen’s body was found in the woods.
Robinson’s then-girlfriend, Cecily Aguilar, helped dismember and hide Guillen’s body.
She pleaded guilty last year for her role in the crime and was sentenced to 30 years in prison.
An investigation by military officials into Guillen’s murder determined that she was also sexually harassed and that leaders failed to take appropriate action.
The Atlantic did not respond to The Post’s request for comment.
In 2020, Goldberg reported that Trump referred to dead US troops as “suckers” and “losers” on the morning of a planned visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery in France in 2018.
Trump denied that report.