Shady Details About Kamala Harris' Husband Doug Emhoff

In his role as Kamala Harris' husband and the nation's first-ever second husband, Doug Emhoff has been a very vocal and supportive champion of his wife and her ambitions. While the pair have certainly made time for their marriage amid all the politics, Emhoff nonetheless stumped for his wife during her ultimately unsuccessful presidential campaign. Through his many ringing endorsements and showers of praise, Emhoff has often gone to great lengths to prove to the world just how devoted he is as both a husband and a father.

From time to time, however, Emhoff's efforts to boost Harris' run for the presidency went terribly wrong. This was particularly true when a slew of allegations surfaced regarding Emhoff's behavior toward women prior to his relationship with Harris, including claims of infidelity and even physical abuse. While Emhoff staunchly denied many of the allegations, it led many to question the truth about how strong his marriage to Harris actually is, and painted Emhoff in a particularly shady light.

Getting labeled with the online parlance of being a "wife guy" has become something of a double-edged sword, and carries with it some questionable connotations. It's commonly used to describe men who are best known because of their relationship to their wife, and their public support of their wife. So-called "wife guys" are often accused of using their seemingly close relationship with their spouses to convince people of their own virtue, and of trying to convince people they are trustworthy.

Emhoff seemed to embrace that term fully in January 2020 when he messaged fellow politician Andrew Yang on X (formerly Twitter) about Yang's wife, Evelyn Yang. Emhoff wrote, "From one Wife Guy to another Wife Guy...you should be so proud of her my friend." The label was even applied to Emhoff by major news organizations, including Newsweek who ran the headline, "Doug Emhoff Secures 'Wife Guy' Status With Viral Speech" in August 2024, after Emhoff's speech at the Democratic National Convention.

However, this whole perspective changed a few days later when allegations surfaced accusing Emhoff of having an affair while married to his first wife, Kerstin Mackin, tarnishing Emhoff's carefully cultivated public persona as a wife guy.

Long before Doug Emhoff and Kamala Harris' first romantic blind date in 2013 and subsequent high-profile marriage, Emhoff was married for 16 years to Kerstin Mackin, with whom he shares two adult children –- daughter Ella and son Cole. While their divorce in 2008 seemed amicable, new information came to light in August 2024 suggesting that Emhoff had cheated on his wife during their marriage, allegedly getting his children's nanny pregnant in the process.

While some felt the information was released simply in an effort to smear Emhoff and make Harris look bad right before the election, Emhoff still admitted to cheating during his first marriage and directly addressed his past mistakes. "During my first marriage, Kerstin and I went through some tough times on account of my actions," Emhoff said in a statement to CNN at the time. "I took responsibility, and in the years since, we worked through things as a family and have come out stronger on the other side."

In Harris' book "107 Days" — a controversial tell-all about her run for president that has turned quite a few of her former allies against her – the former vice president admitted that she'd known about the affair before she ever tied the knot with Emhoff. "Doug had told me about it when we were dating," Harris wrote (via InStyle). She added that the affair had been revealed when Harris was vetted before being selected to be Joe Biden's vice president, but didn't become news until it was politically advantageous for her rivals.

In October 2024, shortly after Doug Emhoff released his statement about cheating on his ex-wife, he became the focus of another damning claim. A woman claimed to have dated Emhoff in 2012, after his divorce but before he met now-wife Kamala Harris. The unnamed woman, who was only identified by the pseudonym "Jane," spoke with The Daily Mail and claimed that she'd had an intense and whirlwind romance with Emhoff after connecting on a dating website.

Eventually, in May 2012, she and Emhoff allegedly flew to France for a black-tie gala, and the event was going great until they decided to leave at around two in the morning. According to Jane, the line for the valet was incredibly long and so she went up to try and give the valet driver a large tip to try and get their car brought up sooner. "As I'm talking to him, Doug got out of the line, comes up, turns me around by my right shoulder. I'm completely caught off guard," the woman told the outlet. "'He slaps me so hard I spin around, and I'm in utter shock. There had been no fight, no argument."

The woman claimed that she slapped him back and tried to leave without Emhoff, but he forced his way into the car. "In that moment, his mask had dropped and I saw his dark side," she claimed. Emhoff's team staunchly denied the woman's allegations, telling Semafor, "Any suggestion that he would or has ever hit a woman is false."

After already weathering the storms of controversy over allegations of infidelity and abuse, Doug Emhoff was the subject of yet another scandal in October 2024. Some of Emhoff's legal colleagues from his time at the law firm Venable leveled even more accusations against the former second gentleman. Unnamed sources spoke with The Daily Mail and claimed that Emhoff was overly flirtatious and downright inappropriate with female employees at the time.

The sources also claimed that Emhoff could be vengeful and vindictive. One female staffer told the outlet that it was well-known around the office that if the women at the firm "weren't flirty back, or didn't respond positively, then you were on his s*** list." Additionally, the staffer said that it would often extend into the assignments and cases that were handed out, and that if women didn't take his flirting in stride, "You wouldn't get to work on the cases you wanted to work on." 

Additionally, Emhoff — who was the boss of the Los Angeles office for Venable LLP from 2006 until 2017– was accused of hiring an unqualified young woman to be his assistant as a "trophy secretary." Unlike the other shady details about him, Emhoff has yet to publicly address the allegations of inappropriate behavior during his time with Venable.