A Donald Trump-appointed official accused of leaking hundreds of racist, private text messages sent by the party’s youngest leaders is believed to have acted after a major bust-up over a photo-op with the president.
Gavin Wax, the chief of staff in the Office of Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs at the State Department, is facing backlash from his own allies after a bombshell Politico report revealed messages from a Telegram chat made up of “Young Republican” leaders containing 251 slurs—including the N-word, the F-slur and a declaration of love for Hitler.
Wax, the former president of the New York Young Republican Club, is under fire despite not being in the chat at all. Multiple sources with knowledge of the matter told the Daily Beast that the 31-year-old obtained and leaked the messages to settle a longstanding feud with Peter Giunta, the former chair of the New York State Republican Club, who was implicated in the report.
Once friends, the two allegedly found themselves at odds over a photo opportunity with then-presidential candidate Trump during his campaign rally in Wildwood, New Jersey, in May 2024.
Sources close to Giunta told the Daily Beast that “a miscommunication” resulted in Wax being left out of the photo with Trump, for which he blamed Giunta, 31.
It wasn’t until this year—while Giunta was running on a pro-Trump slate to lead the Young Republican National Federation—that he discovered Wax had never fully recovered from the incident, and was allegedly enacting revenge through support for Giunta’s opponent, Hayden Padgett.
“It’s just stupidity at this point,” the source said. “It’s a race, a race to see who destroys who first. And it’s just really disgusting.”
Described as “the most prominent voice in the chat spreading racist messages,” Giunta repeatedly wrote hateful posts to the group, including “I love Hitler,” referring to Black people as “the watermelon people,” and advising chatmates to “scream the no-no word” if they board a plane and see the pilot is a woman with skin “10 shades darker than someone from Sicily.”
Giunta, who declined to provide a statement for this story, was the first to publicly blame Wax for the leak.
“These logs were sourced by way of extortion and provided to POLITICO by the very same people conspiring against me,” he told the outlet. “What’s most disheartening is that, despite my unwavering support of President Trump since 2016, rouge [sic] members of his administration—including Gavin Wax—have participated in this conspiracy to ruin me publicly simply because I challenged them privately.”
A source close to Giunta claimed that the White House was aware of Wax leaking the chat logs to Politico ahead of publication, and that officials “confronted” Wax—who denied wrongdoing—on three separate occasions.
But those close to Wax, who declined to comment for this story, vehemently denied he was the leaker and insisted he was made the fall guy because of his feud with Giunta.
A longtime Trump ally, Wax was tapped to join the administration after Trump’s 2024 election win and previously served as senior advisor to then FCC Commissioner Nathan Simington before moving to the State Department.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for clarification.
The source further claimed that it was not a single individual, but several people, who leaked the logs to Politico. They also pointed to the onslaught of hateful comments Wax has received online since Giunta named him to the outlet.
One young GOP strategist, identified on X as Aidan, fired off a series of posts slamming Wax, including claims that the White House “has proof that Gavin planted the story” and calling the leak “purely a political hit job that implicated the admin, the GOP, and Republicans.”
“I can’t express how disappointed I am that someone I thought was friendly and loyal did this to our friends and his friends,” he wrote. “And the president. And the country. Not only was it selfish, it was malicious and stupid.”
Former GOP State Rep. Chris Lonsdale wrote on X that Wax “should not be trusted in the Administration or Republican Politics.”
Far-right political commentator Milo Yiannopoulos added in a post on X that Wax threatened Michael Bartels, another Trump official in the chat, to share the chat logs with him, “threatening his career if he did not.”
“This goes far beyond cowardice. Wax, it appears, worked extensively with hostile media to destroy the reputations of a number of fellow conservatives,” he wrote, adding that Wax “was not protected by the White House when the White House had the opportunity to do so.”
Others have jumped to defend the former New York leader, including former Breitbart editor and Steve Bannon confidant Raheem Kassam.
“It wasn’t Gavin,” he insisted on X, in a post with nearly 340,000 views. “I’m not ratting on anyone. But it wasn’t Gavin.”
What’s been made clear, however, is that speculation over Wax’s role in the leak has become more prominent in some Republican circles than the contents of the messages themselves.
When Vicki Schmidt, the Republican gubernatorial candidate in Kansas, publicly called on two Kansas Republicans whose hateful comments were revealed to step down from the state’s branch of Young Republicans, she was blasted by X user Aidan, who is reportedly a friend of Giunta.
“I promise you, people like you have done everything to tarnish our reputation. Alex was your last hope,” he wrote, adding: “Have fun being another stupid b**ch that ran for governor and lost. I’m not rooting for you.”
The 15,000-member Young Republican National Federation itself faced backlash for calling for the resignation of those involved and condemning the “vile and inexcusable language revealed in the Politico article.”
Vice President JD Vance refused to condemn the language, rallying behind the victims of the leak.
Vance, 41, said on X that he would “refuse to join the pearl clutching.” He said he had grown up in a different era where “most of... the stupid things that I did as a teenager and as a young adult, they’re not on the internet.”
Giunta and Wax are both 31.
Vance’s comments came the same day that the U.S. State Department announced it had revoked visas based on comments made after the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
