Newly unsealed court records obtained by the Washington Free Beacon show that Ruben Gallego left his pregnant wife, who was expected to give birth “any day.”
The records, first reported by the Washington Free Beacon, reveal that Gallego filed for divorce from Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego, serving then as a City Councilwoman, and a Motion to seal the records on December 15, 2016.
Gallego failed in an Arizona Supreme Court appeal to keep his divorce records sealed by the courts after a ten-month-long legal battle with the newspaper, costing his campaign over one million dollars.
Although the files contain no personal information about their child, Gallego, when asked in an interview earlier this month why he was fighting to keep the records sealed, used his son, claiming that he is trying to protect him from attacks:
Previously, Gallego argued that the case must be sealed because “each party is a high profile public official” and the matter “will likely receive intense scrutiny from the media.”
It was further revealed in the records that Ruben Gallego wanted his ex-wife to pay attorneys’ fees for the divorce after he claimed their marriage was “irretrievably broken,” which Kate Gallego said was unknown to her.
Per the Washington Free Beacon:
It was Ruben Gallego who moved to seal the record back in 2016. In his memorandum making the case to the court, he noted that Kate Gallego had “not yet been served” with divorce papers, nor had “her attorney entered an appearance” in the case, but that she was “likely to give birth any day.”
Gallego’s petition for divorce stipulated that the “parties’ marriage is irretrievably broken” and that “there is no reasonable prospect of reconciliation.” But Kate Gallego appears to have been blindsided by her husband’s decision. When she responded to her husband’s filing in February of 2017, she said she was “without knowledge of information sufficient to form a belief” about her husband’s claim that the marriage was broken beyond repair—and she denied the allegation.
The newly unsealed file also shows that Gallego wanted his wife to foot the bill for the divorce proceedings, stipulating that he was “entitled to an award of attorney’s fees” pursuant to an Arizona statute allowing a court to award attorney’s fees based on several factors.
Kate Gallego saw things differently, asking the court in her February 2017 response to “enter an order that husband contribute to wife’s attorney’s fees and costs.”
The divorce was finalized in April 2017. Not long after divorcing his wife, he shacked up with a DC lobbyist with whom he had a wedding shrouded in dishonesty and mystery.
Despite remarrying in December 2019, Gallego publicly announced that he popped the question months later in a February 15, 2020, Instagram post, captioned, “She said yes!!” Over one year later, in June 2021, the pair had a public wedding ceremony, leading the public to believe they were just married, nearly two years after obtaining their Washington, DC, marriage license.
You can read the partially redacted divorce records here.
