MINNEAPOLIS — Minnesota GOP Chairwoman Jennifer Carnahan spoke publicly Tuesday for the first time since the sex trafficking indictment against a Republican strategist and major donor.
Carnahan spoke about the charges against Anton "Anthony" Lazzaro in an interview on The Paul and Jordana Show on News Talk 830 WCCO Radio Tuesday, saying she "didn't have any direct knowledge on the alleged criminal activities."
Lazzaro is facing 10 federal sex trafficking charges for allegedly recruiting six minor victims to engage in commercial sex acts.
Court records also show in December – at Lazzaro's swanky downtown Minneapolis condo – the FBI seized his Ferrari, $371,000, 13 cell phones, computers and memory cards. Gisela Castro Medina, a 19-year-old college student from Delano who has been identified as the chair of the University of St. Thomas College Republicans chapter, was also indicted and made her first court appearance on Monday, Aug. 16.
Carnahan said she was unaware that Lazzaro's home was raided in December 2020.
“I don’t know how we would know his house was raided unless that was public information," Carnahan told The Paul and Jordana Show on WCCO Radio. "Yeah, he was invited to our wedding, but there were a lot of other Republicans invited to my wedding. But to insinuate or assume that I would know anything about this is just categorically false. How could you hold all of us accountable to his actions we didn’t know about?”
Carnahan and Lazzaro hosted a podcast together and were often seen together socially, prompting many within party to call for her removal. While having personal ties to Lazzaro, Carnahan continues to deny having any knowledge of the allegations against Lazzaro. On Tuesday, she maintained that stance.
"Mr. Lazzaro was a major donor to the Republican Party of Minnesota as you’ve mentioned as well as a lot of other Republican candidates and causes, so a big part of my job is to certainly raise money for the organization so we can be fully funded to elect Republicans and defeat Democrats," Carnahan said in her interview with WCCO Radio. "I met Mr. Lazzaro in 2016, I was running for state senate in downtown Minneapolis and I door knocked every high rise in the city, and his was one of the doors I knocked on, he didn’t answer, as a lot of people did they reached out to me after, and he was one of the people that reached out…When I decided to run for chair 6 months after that he helped my campaign a bit, and then became a major donor to our party shortly thereafter. I did have a political friendship with him…but the concern that I have for us to know the personal background of every contributor, of every person we meet, I think to imply guilt by association is just wrong."
Carnahan is encouraging members of the party's executive committee to put her up for a vote of no confidence on Thursday.
“I’m expecting for that board to absolutely take a vote on whether or not I should resign, and we’ll see how it goes," Carnahan said during Tuesday's radio interview. "I don’t think It’s going to pass. I put out an email yesterday stating directly that I will call for us to have a state central committee meeting after Labor Day.”
Carnahan has said she has no intention to resign; in order for her to be ousted, a two-thirds majority must vote for her removal – 10 of the 15 members on the panel. The other option for Carnahan's detractors would be to force a meeting of the party's central committee, which is a group of 300 active Republicans. They would need to gather signatures of 15% of the members, or 45 signatures, to trigger such a meeting. The process would take several weeks to unfold.