Pelosi’s Hair Stylist Says That Salon Owner Approved Visit

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) holds her weekly press briefing on Capitol Hill in Washington on Aug. 13, 2020. Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images

A San Francisco cosmetologist who works at the salon that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) visited this week tried to distance himself from the owner of the salon.

Hair stylist Jonathan DeNardo said that Pelosi was the victim of a set up that was designed to embarrass the speaker for allegedly ignoring COVID-19 rules.

“The fact that Ms. Kious is now objecting to Speaker Pelosi’s presence at eSalon, and from a simple surface-level review of Ms. Kious’s political leanings, it appears Ms. Kious is furthering a setup of Speaker Pelosi for her own vain aspirations,” lawyer Matthew Soleimanpour said in a statement to news outlets.

He added: “Mr. DeNardo’s name has now been dragged through the mud for simply following Ms. Kious’s recommendations.”

The lawyer said that DeNardo worked on Pelosi’s hair after getting approval from salon owner, Erica Kious. DeNardo said that during a phone call last weekend with Kious, she was openly critical of Pelosi, who has represented San Francisco in the House of Representatives since the late 1980s.

“Ms. Kious took special interest in the appointment during this telephone call, wherein she made several vitriolic and incendiary comments about Speaker Pelosi and her purported responsibility for temporarily suspending operations of Ms. Kious’s business,” the statement from the lawyer said, according to KRON-TV.

Video footage from the salon that was sent to Fox News showed Pelosi walking with wet hair and without a mask on.

Kious, in an interview with Fox News’s Tucker Carlson on Wednesday night, said that she did not attempt to entrap Pelosi.

“She had called the stylist and/or her assistant did and made the appointment. So yes, the appointment was already booked. So there’s no way I could have set that up,” Kious said. “And I’ve had a camera system in there for 5 years. I mean, I didn’t go in there and turn cameras on as soon as she walked in, etc. So that’s absolutely false.”

Kious went on to say that due to the pandemic restrictions, she has lost a considerable amount of business in the past 6 months. A number of businesses were forced to shut down earlier this year to curb the spread of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, a novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19.

“I mean, we’ve lost at least 60 percent of our clients. I’ve lost the majority of my staff. So, you know, 6 months is a long time to be closed down,” she said.

Pelosi Response

In a news conference, Pelosi told reporters, “I take responsibility for trusting the word of a neighborhood salon I’ve been to over the years many times and when they said, ‘We’re able to accommodate people, one person at a time,’ I trusted that.”

Going further, Pelosi told reporters, “I think that this salon owes me an apology for setting me up.”

“I don’t wear a mask when I’m washing my hair. Do you wear a mask when you’re washing your hair? I always wear a mask,” she said, adding that the clip showed her as she was leaving the chair.

In the aftermath, President Donald Trump and other prominent Republicans seized on the video.