Campaign Denies Report of Talarico’s Ohio Facility Stay

A report alleging that Texas Senate candidate James Talarico was treated at an Ohio mental-health facility has been denied by his campaign, and the account has not been independently confirmed in the material reviewed. Nick Sortor said Sunday that an unidentified employee at the Lindner Center of Hope in Mason, Ohio, told him and political strategist Rhein Amacher that Talarico had been a patient and was discharged earlier that week. Sortor posted a recording of a phone call that includes an employee saying Talarico appeared to have been discharged that evening. The employee has not been publicly identified, and the facility has not issued an independently verifiable confirmation in the reports. Talarico spokesperson JT Ennis rejected the allegation in a social-media post, saying Talarico had been home in Austin recovering from the flu the previous week. Ennis called the facility account a lie. The reports do not provide independent evidence establishing where Talarico was during the period in question. The campaign had attributed Talarico’s absence from in-person campaigning to illness.