Trans woman says ‘hypocrite’ Lindsey Graham paid her for sex. She’s calling out his anti-trans legacy

This story is a collaboration between Them and The Advocate.

Taylor Snider says dealing with high-profile clientele was nothing new for her by 2015.

She had been a sex worker for nearly seven years at that point, and was accustomed to being paid for her time and discretion. She tells Them that’s why she thought nothing of being paid for roughly a half-hour of sex work on June 7 of that year by a man she claims was the late South Carolina Senator — and then-Republican presidential candidate — Lindsey Graham, who had announced his candidacy six days prior.

Snider says she didn’t initially realize who the man she had seen at the Washington Hilton was until he appeared on the mounted television of a divey New York City restaurant she and her friend were eating at just a week later.

“CNN playing in the background and then all of a sudden he pops up on the TV, and he was talking about the Tea Party,” she tells Them. “I didn’t think anything of it.” Various press releases show that Graham gave interviews to CNN around that time, including a sit-down with Wolf Blitzer on the Situation Room on June 17 and a June 13 conversation with Michael Smerconish that addresses the “talk radio warlords” — a seeming reference to the Tea Party, a political movement that challenged mainstream Republicanism in a precursor to MAGA’s rise.

At the time, Graham was sometimes criticized within the Republican Party for being more moderate on some social issues, though he has always been hawkish on foreign policy and consistently supported restrictions on reproductive rights. When Snider says she had a paid sexual encounter with him, Graham had yet to use transgender people specifically as currency to further propel his political career.

In the early days of his 2016 presidential campaign, Graham, 59 years old at the time, had flown out to Iowa for a series of campaign kickoff events, including a “Roast and Ride” event hosted by GOP Senator Joni Ernst in Boone on June 6, the same day Snider says she posted a personal ad online announcing she would be in Washington, D.C.

Them reviewed screenshots of a June 7, 2015, text exchange appearing to arrange an appointment at a Washington hotel, as well as a dated advertisement Snider says she posted. Them cannot independently confirm the veracity of these messages.

Snider says an unidentified person who appears to message her at 8:48 a.m. asking about the timing of her earliest appointment is Lindsey Graham.

After agreeing to meet that afternoon at 1:30 at her hotel, the unnamed person asks, “Are you more of a top or a bottom?” The unnamed person then adds in the screenshots, “I am a bottom,” before Snider appears to tell the potential client to refrain from explicit conversation in the text thread.

On the morning of June 7, the Senator appeared on CNN’s State of the Union, but in an interview that was pre-taped during his trip to Iowa, with a dateline identifying the location as Boone, a small city north of Des Moines. He notably said Caitlyn Jenner should be welcome in the Republican Party during this interview. By 11:30 a.m. the morning of June 8, Graham delivered remarks in Greenville, South Carolina, as part of the Upstate Chamber Coalition Presidential Series. Them contacted Graham’s former spokesperson Taylor Reidy, his former Iowa campaign director Tracie Gibler, his former campaign manager Christian Ferry, and former spokesperson Russell Warren. They did not respond to a request for comment, including questions about Graham’s whereabouts on June 7, 2015.

It wasn’t until 2020, when gay adult film star Sean Harding stepped forward to share that an unnamed Republican senator had hired him for sex work — prompting observers to connect the story to Graham due to the nickname queer sex workers allegedly called him, “Lady G” — that Snider said she considered sharing her story.

She tells Them that in June 2020, she began working with a public relations representative, who told her she could sell her story for upwards of $50,000. In a packet of material used to pitch media outlets at the time, Snider and her representative compiled screenshots of the alleged text messages she exchanged with Graham, a copy of her ad, and a timeline of Graham’s public whereabouts around the time of the appointment. That timeline does not include Graham’s June 8, 2015, morning appearance in Greenville, but Snider alleges the liaison took place in the early afternoon of the previous day.

The effort came to a screeching halt after Snider says she received a threatening phone call from a blocked number, and was told, “If you move forward with your story, watch your back.” In a separate interview, a family member of Snider told Them that they received a phone call from Snider in June 2020, in which she shared for the first time that Graham had hired her for sex work years prior. That relative also said Snider was concerned about a threatening phone call in connection with trying to go public with her story. Them is not identifying the relative to protect their privacy.

Related: In Viral Post, Author Jesse James Rose Opens Up About Anti-LGBTQ+ Senator Lindsey Graham Allegedly Hiring Her for Sex Work

Snider says she completely abandoned the idea of selling the story following that call. But in the wake of Graham’s death on July 11, trans memoirist Jesse James Rose went public with her own claim that the senator hired her for sex when she was in college, prior to her gender transition. After reading Rose’s story, which called Graham a “far right freak” who hired queer and trans people for sex work before “turning around and voting against” their rights, Snider says she felt compelled to step forward and speak. She is the second trans woman to publicly do so, though Snider notably claims that Graham hired her after she had already transitioned. After publicly coming out with her story, she received backlash from some gay men who say they don’t believe her because Graham “only liked men.” Her response? “Lindsey Graham liked dick.”

“This is just someone that I met once for 35 minutes, and that was that. They gave me a little bit of money, not nearly enough at this rate, and I’m not gaining anything by this,” she tells Them. “I’m just trying to point out the hypocrisies that are actively in our world right now.”

Graham did indeed leave behind a legacy of anti-LGBTQ+ legislative action, including opposing marriage equality, advocating against the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” voting against gender-affirming care for trans minors, and arguing that trans bathroom bans were needed to keep “biological male[s] who identif[y] as a female” out of women’s facilities. Graham also championed the passage of FOSTA/SESTA, a law that further criminalized online sex work, that advocates have long said made sex workers more vulnerable to violence.

Below, Snider details her alleged meeting with Graham, how she reacted to seeing Jesse James Rose’s allegations, and why she’s urging others to find their “receipts.” The following has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

Walk me through the chronology, from start to finish.

I first met Senator Lindsey Graham in June 2015. It was the first time that I had ever visited Washington, D.C., and I had been a sex worker for about seven years prior. This wasn’t anything new for me. I posted my little ad, made my travel plans, got to D.C., and got a text message from him. It was very standard. Even looking back on it now, there really is nothing that exciting about it. Nothing made me raise an eyebrow.

He got my information. We exchanged a few texts. He knew what he needed to bring. I gave him the address. He came over to the DuPont Circle Hilton. That’s where I was staying. It was very normal. He was only there for maybe like a half hour. It wasn’t a long interaction. He left, and then I didn’t think anything else of it. I asked him just small talk, like “What are you doing the rest of your day?" And so he’s like, “Nothing. I’m just going right back to work." That’s exactly what he was doing.

I continue on with my little trip to D.C., and then after I wrap up the week in D.C., I’m going up the East Coast. Then, when I was in New York City, I was traveling with a girlfriend, and we went to grab dinner at some restaurant, and they had TV. It was some divey place, but they had TVs mounted on the wall, and there was CNN playing in the background. Then all of a sudden he pops up on the TV, and he was talking about the Tea Party, and I’m just looking and like, “I just saw this motherfucker a week and a half ago.” My friend’s like, “Are you sure?” I’m like, “Yeah, that’s my client.”

When he was spouting off on the Tea Party stuff, I was like, “Whatever, big whoop.” I didn’t think anything of it. I’ve met a lot of high-profile celebrityesque types. I know people who have been sitting members of Congress in the past, not just Senator Lindsey Graham, but I wouldn’t even think about outing some of these people because they’re not doing the shit that he was doing.

I didn’t really think much of selling my story because in 2015, there were these girls that I was really good friends with who sold their stories regarding sleeping with celebrities. At the time, I was like, “That’s just so tacky. I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to brand myself like that.” Because God forbid I didn’t go far with that. Then I would have no way to take care of myself. Survival sex work would just be nixed from my life, and no one would take me seriously. I was really apprehensive about doing that from the jump.

Tell me about what happened to shift things for you in 2020.

As time continued to go on, and I continued to watch the news or see articles where he’s pushing more for the North Carolina trans bathroom laws. I’m like, “Wow, you are a hypocrite. You were doing all kinds of shit with me.” It was out of sight, out of mind, but in the back of my brain, I was like, “You’re still a piece of shit because you’re now signing anti-trans legislation.” [Editorial note: Senators don’t sign laws; they vote for legislation. Presidents sign legislation.]

Then, 2020 rolls around. Sean Harding was a gay porn star — and for the most part, Lindsey Graham really loved being with gay men. There were a handful of trans women that he was with, myself included. That was one of the other questions I’ve asked almost any of my clients: “Is this your first time? Have you been with other trans people before?” Because to me, that makes me feel a lot more comfortable knowing what you have experienced before, because it makes the situation less awkward. Graham had admitted to me in our session that he had seen two other trans women besides me. So it was really minimal. So he had seen three trans people and then mostly gay men.

Sean Harding had made his post, and he was stirring up a lot of conversation on Twitter. I thought, “I actually have some receipts; I just have to dig for them. I need to look.” I had this PR woman at the time, and she was helping me facilitate that, look for things, and pitch the story to other news outlets. I was able to find my text conversation with him. What we were able to come up with, based on my text thread and my advertisement that I had posted and the screenshots of my advertisement and the dates that they were listed, fully lined up with his timeline of being in Washington, D.C. at the same exact time. That is really my biggest piece of evidence that I have: just literally having enough documentation showing that we were in D.C. at the same time.

We were also in the process of trying to get the video surveillance footage from the Washington DuPont Circle Hilton of him entering the hotel at the time that we agreed on walking on my floor.

She definitely pitched something because she was throwing dollar figures at me. She said, “I think the starting ask we’re going to ask for is $50,000.” Obviously, I didn’t get anything. A week after we started collecting all this information, I was flying from Chicago to Seattle. I was waiting at the gate, waiting to board the flight, and I got a phone call from a restricted number. That never ever happens for me because I was paying for a service that blocks those calls from coming through. I thought it was really weird. When I answered it, the voice on the other line said, “If you move forward with your story, watch your back.” They didn’t name-drop Lindsey Graham. They didn’t say that they were going to kill me. But they did threaten me enough to the point where I was really freaked out. It made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

I didn’t want my family to have to suffer those consequences, because my family was relying on me financially, too. I flew from Chicago to Seattle, and the second I landed in Seattle, I went right to the hotel. I took my ads down, locked my door, and locked myself in my room for three days, and I only saw people I had met previously on previous trips. I flew home, and then I just kind of laid low after that until things kind of settled down a little bit.

What compelled you to speak up now after experiencing that?

I saw that he died and I was like, “Holy crap.” That’s when I discovered that there was another trans woman, Jesse James Rose. I saw her post — that was the first thing that I saw pop up, before I saw the announcement saying that he was dead. That’s why I felt inspired to go ahead and just start talking.

Any last thoughts on this?

To the people that are questioning the validity of the things that I’m saying, you feel free to question. I’m not sitting here telling any lies. Guys, this is the truth. This is the experience of so many other people, a handful of trans women and a lot of gay men.

The only other thing I’m going to say is that if there are any other sex workers out there who have had to have this interaction with Lindsey Graham, dig up your receipts and post them. I can’t be the only one doing this, because if you have something more incriminating, you need to speak up and share it, because now is the opportunity to hold someone actually accountable.

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