Years ago, back on Dec. 15, 2016, as former President Donald Trump — then president-elect — was preparing to enter the White House a little over a month later, Arizona Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego filed divorce from his wife, Phoenix city councilwoman Kate Gallego. He then took measures to seal the case file that very same day. Much to his chagrin, that file was unsealed on Thursday after a lengthy 10-month court battle between the couple and the folks over at the Washington Free Beacon. The Free Beacon ended up victorious in that fight.
According to their report on the matter, on Wednesday evening at the Arizona Supreme Court, a last-ditch effort made by the Gallegos to keep the file sealed was shot down. And this is extremely good news for his political opponent, GOP congressional candidate Kari Lake.
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.” Gallego pressed the court, in his opening bid, to ensure Kate Gallego would not be entitled to “long-term spousal maintenance,” asking the judge to find that “neither party is in need of nor entitled to an award of long term spousal maintenance.” Though Kate Gallego argued that she was “entitled to spousal maintenance,” she waived her rights to any such support in the final divorce decree: The pair acknowledged they were “financially independent and no financial assistance by means of spousal maintenance is required now or hereafter.”
While divorce records are public in the state of Arizona, Gallego made the case that this particular instance should be different due to the fact that “each party is a high profile public official” noting the “case will likely receive intense scrutiny from the media.”
Well, it certainly appears he was right, doesn’t it?
The couple’s divorce was officially finalized back in April 2017, as both parties decided to reveal there was “no domestic violence in the marriage” nor did any significant domestic violence take place.
A year later, while telling his side of the story, 39-year-old Gallego met up with Sydney Barron, 25, at a congressional baseball game. There are some serious variations in his retelling of events. In the book he penned, “They Called Us Lucky,” he goes on to write about proposing to Sydney in February 2019, which was only eight months after the two first met. They were married in December of 2019, but did not even announce their engagement on social media until February 2020.
Gallego told his social media followers he was “the happiest man in the world.” In April 2021, the two held a wedding in Puerto Rico.
So why all of the secrecy concerning the divorce aside from the media coverage? According to the couple, it was due to their desire to protect their son, despite the fact the partially unredacted documents contain no personal information about their child.
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