Explosive elevator ride between two Trump officials is talk of DC

A senior Trump official is under investigation after being accused of ‘forcefully pushing’ a State Department colleague and threatening to ‘beat the f*** out of’ him inside the agency’s Washington, DC, headquarters.

‘If you ever talk s*** about me or my family again, I will beat the f*** out of you,’ said Gavin Wax, the 32-year-old chief of staff to the under secretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs, according to a formal complaint exclusively obtained by the Daily Mail.

A State Department source familiar with the investigation told the Daily Mail that Wax is being investigated for ᴀssault. 

The complaint was filed by Ali Motamedi, a special ᴀssistant to the US special envoy to Greenland, who says Wax confronted him in early July during the middle of the work day near a sixth-floor elevator bank in the Harry S Truman Building, allegedly placing a hand on his chest as he delivered the threat.

‘He then forcefully pushed me before turning around and reentering the elevator,’ Motamedi wrote.

At the heart of the dispute are two irreconcilable explanations for what happened in that elevator. 

Motamedi, in a signed complaint, describes an unprovoked ‘push’ by another Trump official. 

A source supportive of Wax’s account describes something else entirely: a conversation that began over expense claims and turned hostile only because Motamedi had repeatedly made antisemitic comments about Wax’s Jewish heritage behind his back.

Ali Motamedi claimed that Wax (right) confronted him in early July

The official complaint sent by Motamedi calimed he was ‘forcefully pushed’

Neither Wax nor Motamedi responded to the Daily Mail’s request for comment. 

According to the complaint, the encounter began when Motamedi boarded a basement elevator and found Wax inside with another ‘individual’ he did not recognize. 

That individual was Charles Yockey, a special adviser at the State Department, three sources told the Daily Mail. One official described Yockey as ‘the only real witness who saw what transpired.’

Yockey did not respond to multiple requests by the Daily Mail for comment.

During the ride, Motamedi wrote, Wax opened a ‘tense, but civil’ conversation about ‘a recent exchange between our respective offices.’ The source said the discussion started on routine ground, dinner receipts and expense reimbursements, before turning hostile.

‘For the record, I do not know what Mr. Wax was referring to with respect to his allegation that I had spoken about him or his family,’ Motamedi wrote in his complaint.

The same source disputed that denial, claiming Motamedi had harbored a ‘pre-existing animus’ toward Wax and was ‘strangely fixated’ on his Jewish heritage.

In the past, Motamedi had allegedly made derogatory remarks about Wax’s Jewish heritage and questioned his wife’s Catholic faith, according to the source. Any reference to ‘family,’ the source suggested, stemmed from those remarks.

But a State Department source supportive of Motamedi’s account flatly rejected the anti-Semitism claims, saying Motamedi has never made a comment about Wax’s Jewish heritage or his family in any setting.

The source added that the only criticism Motamedi ever voiced came during his earlier stint at the White House Presidential Personnel Office, before he joined the State Department, when he opposed Wax’s hiring in the administration.

It is unclear whether Motamedi made any such comments during the elevator ride itself or whether Wax brought them up.

The source supportive of Wax’s account also said Yockey backed Wax’s account during a Diplomatic Security review, denying that Wax touched Motamedi or threatened him.

A State Department official told the Daily Mail: ‘We do not comment on internal personnel matters.’

The matter is now under open investigation by the department’s Office of Special Investigations, which reports to the acting inspector general, according to a State Department source familiar with the case.

Motamedi claimed Wax confronted him during the middle of the work day near a sixth-floor elevator bank in the Harry S Truman Building

Wax is the 32-year-old chief of staff to the under secretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs

‘I do believe that there is video evidence of this,’ the source said, noting that at headquarters ‘you can expect there to be multiple cameras, both inside and outside of any elevator, on any floor at any given time.’

That source, an official not authorized to speak publicly, said that the case has moved unusually slow and that colleagues fear it ‘is probably not going to abide by the same process as a typical case,’ with concern inside the investigating office that Wax ‘has the ear of Donald Trump.’

The physical nature of the allegation, the source added, takes it beyond routine personnel discipline: ‘This is much more than just an administrative sort of action. If it is deemed as such, I would imagine that most people would be terminated for this sort of engagement.’

Another source, who spoke with investigators overseeing the case, told the Daily Mail there was no video or eyewitness evidence supporting allegations of physical violence.

The source supportive of Motamedi’s account, however, said security cameras did capture Wax putting an arm over Motamedi’s shoulder and a hand on his chest, and that the push described in the complaint may simply be obscured by the camera angle.

Any finding of criminal conduct could be referred to the Justice Department for prosecution.

Another State Department official who knows both men questioned the idea that Wax enjoys special protection, saying: ‘A lot of people claim to have a relationship with Trump and don’t.’ That official noted Motamedi works under Governor Jeff Landry of Louisiana, the special envoy to Greenland, ‘who does have a personal relationship with Trump.’

A third department source described Motamedi as an unlikely complainant. ‘Ali keeps his head down. He’s really low key, and wants to do a good job in his role,’ the source said. ‘For him to have filed a complaint, it would mean that Gavin is once again doing some Gavin Wax things.’

In the past, Motamedi had allegedly made derogatory remarks about Wax’s Jewish heritage and questioned his wife’s Catholic faith, according to one source

One source, an official not authorized to speak publicly, said that there is concern inside the investigating office that Wax ‘has the ear of Donald Trump’

It is the second time in under a year that a fellow Trump administration official has accused Wax of threatening behavior in a signed document.

Last October, Michael Bartels, a senior adviser at the Small Business Administration, said in a notarized affidavit that Wax demanded he hand over a private Telegram chat log, threatened his professional standing when he resisted, and raised possible legal action over an alleged breach of a non-disclosure agreement.

The affidavit surfaced after Politico published thousands of racist and antisemitic messages from Young Republican leaders’ group chats, a leak that rivals blamed on Wax and that his allies denied he had any part in.

As the Daily Mail reported last fall, Republican party chiefs hand-delivered the affidavit to the White House Office of Political Affairs on October 7, a week before the Politico story broke.

Three days later, the same office received a screensH๏τ of texts between Wax and Politico reporter Jason Beeferman, allegedly showing Wax supplying names, phone numbers and background on people featured in the chats.

Wax denied being the leaker. He faced no known formal consequences and remains in his post.

He reached his State Department perch after six years at the helm of the New York Young Republican Club, the first Young Republicans chapter to endorse Trump’s 2024 campaign. 

Wax has been in Trump’s orbit since 2019, when he took the reins of the century-old club during the president’s first term and set about turning it into what he called ‘a vanguard of the Trump movement.’

‘Gavin operates everything like a mob boss. He’s an Italian mob boss. He is the don of the New York Republican scene. Everyone kisses Gavin’s ring,’ one insider said of him last fall.

By December 2023, the bond was personal enough that Trump, keynoting the club’s annual gala, singled him out from the stage: ‘Let me especially thank your president Gavin Wax.’

‘You can’t change a person. Wax has always been a problem. Now he is the State Department’s problem and no longer Brendan Carr’s,’ the third source said, a reference to the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, where Wax served as an aide in 2025.

As for his reputation inside the building, the source who disclosed the complaint said: ‘I’ve heard he’s a very abrasive and difficult personality,’ adding that after last fall’s controversy ‘he’s lost a lot of rapport, even among his colleagues.’