A contractor said Ashley Kalus called him slurs. He's now saying some texts were fake.
Katherine Gregg- Michael Gruener, a Chicago contractor, admitted to altering text messages to falsely portray Ashley Kalus, the 2022 Rhode Island Republican gubernatorial candidate, as homophobic and unprofessional.
- Gruener claims he was manipulated by Gov. Dan McKee's reelection campaign and fabricated the texts after losing a lawsuit in which Kalus' husband testified against him.
- The altered texts were released to media outlets shortly before the election, and while Kalus did not deny their authenticity at the time, she now alleges a coordinated smear campaign by McKee and his team.
- Gruener's admission came as part of a settlement in a lawsuit filed by Kalus and her husband, and while he apologized, he did not specify which parts of the texts were fabricated.
PROVIDENCE – A Chicago contractor admitted to providing "altered text message" exchanges to various media outlets to "falsely" paint Ashley Kalus, the 2022 Republican candidate for governor in Rhode Island, as "homophobic" and "inherently unprofessional."
In an April 25, 2025, statement of "retraction and apology" recently made public by Kalus, the contractor, Michael Gruener, said he regrets "allowing myself to be used as a political weapon" by Gov. Dan McKee's reelection campaign in the final days of the 2022 gubernatorial campaign.
"Ultimately, the McKee campaign helped me shop pre-packaged stories to the media by making introductions and framing the stories to be damaging," Gruener wrote in a notarized statement made as part of a court settlement with Kalus and her husband, Dr. Jeffrey Weinzweig.
"In hindsight, I recognize I was complicit in a coordinated, untruthful political attack orchestrated to destroy Ashley's candidacy and reputation," Gruener wrote.
Democrat McKee ultimately beat Kalus − a relative newcomer to the state who had announced her run for governor only a few months after registering to vote in Rhode Island for the first time − 58% to 39% in the Nov. 8, 2022 election.
Gruener says he altered texts, lied to reporter about context
The alleged texts – spanning a period from Nov. 6, 2018, to Dec. 28, 2019 – involved Kalus, Weinzweig and Gruener, a contractor who did work on the same West Ontario Street building in Chicago where Weinzweig had a medical office.
In the letter, Gruener explained his actions this way:
"Political operatives − specifically the McKee campaign manager − exploited my emotions during a period of frustration after I lost [an unrelated] lawsuit in which Dr. Weinzweig, her husband, testified as a witness called by my opponent."
"After that, I began reaching out to the governor's office," he wrote. "We planned the timing of the stories to run one week before her gubernatorial election – strategically chosen to inflict damage and leave her insufficient time to respond."
Gruener wrote that he "altered text message exchanges and misrepresented evidence."
Elaborating, he wrote: "I knowingly fabricated claims against her, fully aware that Ashley could not disprove events that never occurred ... she could not reasonably deny their existence due to the fact (which was not a fact at all, and was actually untrue) that they had been accepted into the public record in a lawsuit and thus validated by a court."
Gruener explained that he falsely implied that the images of what appeared to be a text message exchange between him and Kalus that he loaded into a Dropbox folder (an online cloud storage method) and sent to a reporter with The Boston Globe were part of a publicly accessible court record when, in fact, they were not.
"In hindsight," Gruener said. "I recognize I was complicit in a coordinated, untruthful political attack orchestrated to destroy Ashley's candidacy and reputation."
Going deeper: What is the context of this statement?
Gruener's statement was a piece of the confidential settlement reached less than four weeks ahead of the scheduled trial for the lawsuit that Kalus and Weinzweig filed against Gruener and his company in the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois.
Filed in 2022, the lawsuit initially centered on Gruener's alleged violations of both the confidentiality and the non-disparagement provisions in the settlement of a billing dispute over work Gruener's company did at Weinzweig's medical office in Chicago.
The case took a turn after a subpoena unearthed texts and call logs that reflected interactions between Gruener, McKee's campaign manager Brexton Isaacs and a Boston Globe reporter that conflicted with Gruener's initial account of events.
"No doubt they made a decision, strategic or otherwise, that it was in Mr. Gruener's interest to settle and give this statement [of retraction and apology] as part of the settlement," Kalus' Illinois-based lawyer Richard Hellerman told The Journal on June 10.
While Kalus could release the statement, Hellerman said he was not free to say more about the confidential settlement. Gruener's attorney, Lawrence Mishkin, has not responded to Journal inquiries.
What did the Ashley Kalus texts say?
In the texts, received days ahead of the 2022 election by The Journal and multiple other media outlets, Kalus allegedly called Gruener several female gendered slurs, "a loser," a "bottom" (which is sometimes used as a slur against gay people) and a low-life who wears "Costco pants your mom picked out for you."
"You like being my little b---h," she allegedly texted at another point. "Always adjusting your pants ... Loser ... What is the amount to get rid of you? ... I'll make my money back in making you lose money in the future."
Andrea Palagi, a spokeswoman for incumbent Democratic Governor McKee, posted this response on the social media platform X after the first published report on the texts by The Boston Globe:
"Let’s be real here for a minute. Is this how she plans to talk to businesses and developers to bring them to RI? Is this how she plans to negotiate with the [General Assembly] to deliver a budget that helps RIers? Is this how she plans to treat state employees? Ashley Kalus is wrong for RI."
Added then-McKee campaign manager Brexton Isaacs: “Ashley Kalus’ vile and erratic conduct is an embarrassment to the state of Rhode Island. If this is how Ashley Kalus thinks people should conduct themselves, it’s understandable that everywhere she goes, she’s followed by police reports, fraud lawsuits and fines."
Kalus did not, at the time, actually deny writing any of the texts attributed to her.
On WPRO radio − and in a statement from her campaign − Kalus described the texts as evidence she is a "fighter" who is not going to let anyone take advantage of her, and, by extension, Rhode Island taxpayers should she be elected governor of her new home state.
And Gruener, in his "retraction and apology," did not specify which texts he altered and/or falsified and what was untrue.
Kalus responds to the statement
On June 10, Kalus, who has left open the possibility that she will run for governor again in 2026, issued this statement:
"What happened to me wasn’t just a smear campaign – it was a coordinated, unethical, and deeply disturbing abuse of power by Governor Dan McKee and his inner circle."
"Let’s be clear: this isn’t politics as usual – it’s corruption,'' she said.
"Rhode Island cannot survive ten years of Dan McKee’s governorship. From fake sources and manipulated media narratives to targeted smears and backroom threats, his administration has turned deception into a political strategy – and Rhode Islanders are paying the price."
"He lied about me. He lied about the ILO Group contract. He lied about the Washington Bridge," she said. "We have a choice: keep electing problems – or finally choose to solve them."
How did others respond?
McKee's 2022 campaign manager, Isaacs, does not deny introducing Gruener to a Globe reporter or providing the texts to other media outlets and said campaigns routinely share potentially damaging material about their opponents with the media.
But he denies knowing that any of what Gruener provided had been altered or falsified.
McKee's newly hired election campaign manager, Rob Silverstein, provided this response to Journal inquiries about what happened in 2022:
“It appears Ashley Kalus can’t keep her story straight, and believes that anything that goes wrong is someone else's fault."
“The 2022 election is over and Governor McKee is focused on governing and fighting for Rhode Islanders," Silverstein said.
In response to a Journal inquiry, The Boston Globe's director of communications, Carla Kath, issued this statement:
"The Boston Globe stands by its reporting."
"The article published on Nov. 1, 2022, clearly states that Mr. Gruener said he submitted the texts to court as part of a separate dispute that arose from the Chicago project, and that he shared the texts with the Globe. Ms. Kalus has repeatedly acknowledged the authenticity of the texts," Kath said.
"Whether she and her campaign would have responded differently had they better understood where the texts were stored doesn't change the accuracy of the Globe's reporting."