Philandering U.S. Rep Van Taylor faces fresh embarrassment today as his former ‘ISIS bride’ lover reveals new details of her five-times nightly romps with the disgraced Texas lawmaker.
The GOP congressman dropped his reelection bid and confessed to a steamy eight-month affair with reformed jihadist Tania Joya — who claims he was ‘turned on’ by her dark past.
Taylor’s wife Anne Coolidge-Taylor, 53, is sticking by him — at least temporarily — but their 18-year marriage faces fresh stress today as spurned Joya, 38, tells DailyMail.com: ‘He could not keep his d**k in his pants.’
‘For me it was making love, but for him it was just sex. Whenever he was in town, four, five times a night, he was all over me,’ she reveals in an exclusive interview.
‘There were no flowers, no gifts. He didn’t take me on a single date in eight months. He was like, no, I’m too famous, everywhere I go I get harassed.
‘For me it was making love, but for him it was just sex,’ says Tania Joya of her eight-month-long affair with Republican Congressman Van Taylor
Taylor (pictured outside his house in McLean, Virginia, over the weekend) gave his lover $500 on a few occasions. ‘‘I said, wow, it feels like you’re paying me for sex,’ she tells DailyMail.com
‘I can’t even eat out at a restaurant because everybody wants to talk to me which is a laugh because nobody under 55 knows who he is.
‘A couple of times, like Christmas, my birthday, Valentine’s Day, he gave me cash, $500 a time. That was it.
‘I said, wow, it feels like you’re paying me for sex. It made me cringe but he claimed he was too busy to buy gifts and didn’t want the paper trail on his credit card.
‘One person said to me, you’re his booty call. I didn’t really know what that was because I’d been MIA for ten years in the Middle East.’
British-born Joya was radicalized in her teens before marrying Texan Muslim convert John Georgelas and following him to Syria in 2013 where she had ambitions of being a suicide bomber.
But life was so grim there that within weeks the mother-of-four and so-called ‘First Lady of ISIS’ had fled to Turkey, eventually settling in the US where she abandoned radical Islam and embarked on a new life preaching the dangers of extremism.
It was through her work that she crossed paths with Taylor, 49, a two-term congressman for Texas’s 3rd district, which is based around Collin County, north of Dallas.
They soon became friends and, from October 2020 to June 2021, lovers.
Joya claims that Taylor, a distinguished former Marine and Iraq war vet, was captivated and ‘turned on’ by her dark past as a jihadi sympathizer.‘
He thought it was really cool that he was having sex with the First Lady of ISIS,’ laughs the petite fitness fanatic.
‘To be honest I haven’t been with a single guy in America who doesn’t think that’s a turn-on. It’s really sick but at the same time we would just laugh about it.
‘One person said to me, you’re his booty call,’ recalls Joya. ‘I didn’t really know what that was because I’d been MIA for ten years in the Middle East’
Tania Joya says Taylor was turned on by her jihadi past. She is pictured on a beach in Egypt after first husband John Georgelas took her to the Middle East
Tania Joya’s traveled to Syria with first husband, Texan John Georgelas when he went to fight for the Islamic State. She dreamed of becoming a suicide bomber before she became disillusioned
‘He said that I was the most fascinating woman he’s ever met. He loved my stories, and, ha, have I got crazy stories.
‘He would text me nonstop and I would tell my friend, it’s like he doesn’t even have a job.
Joya said she and Taylor would have sex up to five times a night. ‘He was all over me,’ she says
‘The sex was ok but he was a selfish lover, more interested in being pleased than doing the pleasing. I consented to some things that I wish I hadn’t.’
Eventually Taylor broke things off with Joya, refusing to leave real estate mogul Anne — a relative of former president Calvin Coolidge and a direct descendant of Founding Father Thomas Jefferson — and their three daughters.
Joya says the split left her feeling heartbroken, suicidal — and determined to expose ‘family man’ Taylor’s hypocrisy.
Taylor, a hardline conservative fell just 823 votes short of outright victory in the primary and was headed for a runoff with his closest opponent, Keith Self, but he instead emailed supporters on Wednesday last week to reveal that he was bowing out of his GOP primary race in disgrace.
‘About a year ago, I made a horrible mistake that has caused deep hurt and pain among those I love most in this world,’ announced Taylor.
‘I had an affair, it was wrong, and it was the greatest failure of my life.’
Self, 68, will now be the GOP candidate in the solid red seat without having to compete in a run-off.
Behind the scenes DailyMail.com can reveal that mortified Anne learned of the tryst last November when vengeful Joya sent the first of three messages to her via social media.
Joya said she and Taylor started having sex in November 2020 — the month that he got elected for his second term in Congress
Keith Self, 68, will now be the GOP candidate in Taylor’s solidly Republican seat. Suzanne Hart, who arranged for Joya’s interview, finished third in last week’s primary
Taylor’s wife Anne Coolidge-Taylor is a relative of former president Calvin Coolidge and a direct descendant of Founding Father Thomas Jefferson
Taylor insisted on wearing a mask when outside with Joya. ‘He wouldn’t normally wear one,’ she says. ‘We’re Texans, we’re not afraid of Covid’
She and her husband own a four-bed property in Plano, Texas and a sprawling six-bed mansion in McLean, Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C.
Anne is believed to have spent the majority of the past four months at the $3.6m Virginia residence, where she told a DailyMail.com reporter Monday: ‘I’ve got to protect my family,’
Asked if she was sticking by her husband she paused before replying: ‘For the moment.’
Joya’s affair with Taylor also came as a shock to Texas-based cyber security consultant Craig Burma, who was married to Joya from 2018 to January 2022.
She insists they were living separate lives by the time she met Taylor and Burma was frequently out of town as the pair were in the process of getting divorced.
‘At first I would always go over to Van’s house in Plano which wasn’t a problem because his wife only comes to Texas if he wins or if she’s needed for a photograph,’ Joya tells DailyMail.com.
‘After a while we decided it was more convenient for him to come to me. He would always wear a mask so nobody could recognize him. He wouldn’t normally wear one — we’re Texans, we’re not afraid of Covid.
Joya said she messaged Taylor’s wife in November to tell her about their affair that lasted from October 2020 to June 2021
‘One time he turned up in a hat but I made him take it off, he looked so old.’
Angered by having to see Taylor’s wholesome image plastered on billboards and reelection ads after their split, Joya decided to approach Suzanne Harp, a rival candidate in the Republican primary.
Harp — who came third in the five-person poll— arranged for the pretty former fundamentalist to do an interview then shared it with several right-wing websites early last week.
‘Anne knew about it already. I messaged her in late November,’ Joya told DailyMail.com, dismissively.
‘I remember Van panicking and telling me, “I’m going to be divorced in six months.”
‘I said, are you still sleeping in the same bed? He said yes. Then you don’t have anything to worry about honey, I said, because the first thing a woman does when she’s really mad is kick her husband out of bed.‘
Van told me their marriage was loveless anyway. He said they had been sleeping with a pillow between them for the past 11 years.
‘Do I feel sorry for Anne? No, I don’t feel sorry for a rich white woman who has had it good her whole life. Van is a showman. It’s just so fake and I can’t stand fakeness.’
Born Joya Choudhury to Bangladeshi parents, Joya was raised in Harrow, northwest London. After moving to another part of the British capital she was radicalized by Muslim girls who ‘slut shamed’ her for wearing Western clothes.
Soon she was wearing the full veil and being told by a friend to celebrate the bombing of the World Trade Centre in New York. By her own admission, she became ‘a hardcore jihadist’.
Joya joined a Muslim matrimonial website and by February 2003 had been matched with Texan John Georgelas, the son of a retired US Air Force colonel.
Harvard graduates Van Taylor and Anne Coolidge were married in New York City on May 1, 2004. The Republican congressman publicly apologized to his wife and three daughters in a statement to supporters as he withdrew from his primary race
‘About a year ago, I made a horrible mistake that has caused deep hurt and pain among those I love most in this world,’ said Taylor (pictured with wife Anne). ‘I had an affair, it was wrong, and it was the greatest failure of my life’
Van Taylor and his wife Anne live in this six-bedroom $3.6 million home in McLean, Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C.
They were married within a month in a sharia ceremony and settled in California before moving to Cairo in 2011 where Georgelas met other jihadists and was a vocal supporter of ‘pre-IS pro-caliphate voices’.
By 2013, Georgelas was determined to go to Syria and in August took his wife, who was five months pregnant, and three sons over the border to the city of Azaz in north-western Syria.
Joya has insisted that she was tricked, and in any case did not have a choice because of the control her husband exerted over her.
I said, are you still sleeping in the same bed? He said yes. Then you don’t have anything to worry about honey, I said, because the first thing a woman does when she’s really mad is kick her husband out of bed
Former First Lady of ISIS, Tania Joya
There were shoot-outs on the street, food was scarce and Joya says she was locked inside and repeatedly raped by her hardline spouse.
After a few weeks she hired a car and headed for Turkey, crossing a minefield on foot while pushing her youngest child in a buggy for the final few miles of the journey.She has not spoken to Georgelas, who changed his name to Yahya al-Bahrumi, since 2015 and it’s believed he died two years later.
‘She’s an enigma in some ways but she’s a fighter and she lands on her feet because there’s really no choice,’ second husband Burma, 52, said of his colorful ex-wife.
He told DailyMail.com: ‘I hesitate to say things like gullible because I never like to put Tania down. But she has lived her life in a way that taught her women were second class.
‘I don’t think it takes away from her intellect to say she was vulnerable and that Van Taylor played on that vulnerability.’