A video released on Thursday by a left-wing online news channel features three men who claim that Senator Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican who died suddenly in July, paid them for sex.
In the 30-minute video released by the Young Turks network, titled “The CLOSETocracy,” one man who identifies himself only by a first name, Kelvin, claims that Mr. Graham paid him for sex when he was 17 and surreptitiously taped him during the encounter.
Another man said he was picked up by a chauffeured car that delivered him to the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, where he said he was paid to have sex and spend the night with Mr. Graham. That man, who is identified in the film as Cory, said he did not realize it was Mr. Graham until months later when he recognized the senator on television during the 2016 presidential race.
A third man said he was paid to have a sexual encounter with Mr. Graham.
Mr. Graham repeatedly denied that he was gay, even as rumors flew about the personal life of a senator who never married. After the release of the video, a spokesman for a conservative group said that Mr. Graham was gay, but dismissed it as an open secret and an attempt to distract voters in South Carolina’s Senate race.
The New York Times has not verified the identities of the men making the claims, or the veracity of their stories. A website promoting the video, called the Lindsey Graham Files, purports to show travel receipts and other documents from the time of the men’s alleged encounters with Mr. Graham.
The man who identifies himself in the video as Cory has also appeared in pornographic productions under the name Sean Harding.
In 2020, he posted online under the name Sean Harding: “There is a homophobic republican senator who is no better than Trump who keeps passing legislation that is damaging to the lgbt and minority communities. Every sex worker I know has been hired by this man. Wondering if enough of us spoke out if that could get him out of office?”
But it was not until after Mr. Graham’s death that he and others in the video went public in naming him and making claims that included allegations that he could not refute and could have resulted in a lawsuit when the senator was alive.
The video release came less than two weeks before the midterm elections, in which Mr. Graham’s sister, Senator Darline Graham, is in a tight race to retain her brother’s seat in South Carolina. Ms. Graham was appointed to finish the remainder of her brother’s term after his death and received President Trump’s endorsement.
A spokesman for Ms. Graham’s campaign declined to comment.
Representative William Timmons, Republican of South Carolina, posted online late Thursday that Mr. Graham was his longtime mentor and friend and that “after 45 years of service to South Carolina and our country, he deserves better than the Left spreading disgraceful lies about a man who is no longer here to defend himself.”
He did not explicitly address the claim that Mr. Graham was gay, but added “the willingness to stoop to homophobic attacks for political gain says far more about them than it ever will about Lindsey.” He said he expected Ms. Graham to win her race by 10 points.
A longtime top aide to Mr. Graham, Kevin Bishop, referred The Times to Mr. Timmons’s post when asked for comment.
Cenk Uygur, a co-founder of the Young Turks, promoted his video before its release as a “bombshell documentary” in which he would reveal a Republican senator who used male escorts. But the allegations were greeted with a shrug some on the right, who called discussions of Mr. Graham’s sexuality the worst kept secret in Washington.
“Dear Democrats, This is why we called him Lady Graham,” Andrew Kolvet, a spokesman for Turning Point USA, wrote online, using a moniker that circulated widely on social media in 2020 after Mr. Harding first posted the claim that a Republican senator was paying for sex, who he said had the initials “LG.”
“This isn’t an October surprise, we’ve known this for years,” Mr. Kolvet added. “And blaming his sister for the fact Lindsey was a poorly closeted gay man, is only going to backfire. No one cares.”
Mr. Graham, who died suddenly at age 71 of an aortic dissection, never married, and his single status for decades spurred questions about his sexuality. He was aware of the rumors, but always categorically denied that he was gay.
“I know it’s really gonna upset a lot of gay men — I’m sure hundreds of ’em are gonna be jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge — but I ain’t available,” he said in an interview with The New York Times in 2010. “I ain’t gay. Sorry.”
During his 23 years in the Senate, Mr. Graham, an energetic, omnipresent Washington fixture who condemned Mr. Trump before becoming his top ally in Congress, was a vocal opponent of same-sex marriage. He voted against repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the policy that barred openly gay people from serving in the military. And he opposed adding a provision to the annual defense policy bill to expand the definition of hate crimes to include sexual orientation and gender identity.
Michael Gold and Emily Davies contributed reporting.
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