A senior Pentagon official reportedly engaged in a year-long affair with a “professional astrologer” that has led to an impending clash in a Florida courtroom.
On August 22, Anthony Tata filed a 17-page lawsuit against Amy Tripp—who has proclaimed herself the “internet’s most notorious astrologer”—in Palm County Circuit Court, alleging that Tripp engaged in a sustained harassment and defamation campaign after the affair ended.
Though the plaintiff is named as “John Doe,” the filing asserts that he is “an official in the United States Department of Defense” and a novelist who was learning about astrology for one of his books.
The Cut reported that those details fit Tata, the under secretary of defense for personnel and readiness. Tata is a retired Army brigadier general and the author of 13 military thrillers who lives in Palm Beach.
He’s also a former Fox contributor who once said that former President Barack Obama was a “terrorist leader” and that Islam was “the most oppressive, violent religion I know of.”
Separately from his lawsuit for harassment, Tata filed for a temporary restraining order (under his name) against Tripp in July, which was granted on August 7.
Tata Leadership Group, a defense consulting company that Anthony Tata runs, also sued Tripp’s company, Starheal, for breach of contract on Aug. 1. That suit alleges that Tripp violated the nondisclosure clause of their business partnership by posting private information about Tata on social media.
Tata’s entanglement with Tripp began in May 2024. The lawsuit claims that Tata and Tripp met on a dating app while Tata and his wife were “struggling in their relationship.”
Soon, Tata had invested in Tripp’s astrology business, Starheal LLC, a market that he thought could be worth up to $10 billion, “according to Grok and ChatGPT.”
Tripp correctly predicted the day former President Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race in 2024.
While the affair continued, “not without some drama,” Tata was nominated for his Department of Defense (DOD) position in February. The under secretary role is Senate-confirmed and gives broad latitude to execute personnel-related policies at the Pentagon.
Tata had been nominated for a senior DOD role in the first Trump administration, but his nomination was axed due to his history of inflammatory comments.
In June, a confluence of two events lit a match under the tryst: Tata reconciled with his wife, and Tripp read the star signs and thought his Senate confirmation was imminent.
Tripp “informed John Doe that the astrological signs told her that [his] confirmation to his position in the Department of Defense was imminent.”
The next six pages of the complaint allege a three-month-long campaign by Tripp, as well as her parents, to extort and threaten Tata and his wife.
Tripp allegedly threatened to publicly accuse Tata of rape and Tata’s wife of stealing money from her job.
“I just told the White House. You want to be next? You have skeletons in your closet,” read one of Tripp’s texts to Tata’s wife included in the lawsuit.
Weeks after the fracas began, Tripp allegedly demanded $25,000 from Tata.
The suit describes Tata as an “Afghanistan combat veteran diagnosed with PTSD” and says that Tripp’s threats caused severe emotional distress.
Apart from threatening texts and phone calls, the suit claims Tripp made public posts on X divulging personal details about Tata and his wife.
“Ms. Tripp and her followers knew John Doe and his wife’s name, their professions, and their images,” the suit reads.
In interviews with the Daily Beast, attorneys for Tripp alleged that the relationship between Tata and Tripp was much more involved than the portrayal in the John Doe suit.
“There was a very long and serious romantic relationship between Brigadier General Tata and Ms. Amy Tripp,” said Jeff Gutchess, one of Tripp’s attorneys.
While the John Doe suit claims that Ms. Tripp and the plaintiff were having a “casual sexual relationship” that ended in June when the plaintiff and his wife reconciled, Tripp’s attorneys disagree.
Tripp, Gutchess said, “believed right up through the nomination process that he was still going to be with her.”
“She was completely misled by this man and basically destroyed by his emotional manipulation and deception,” he said.
Peter Godwin, another of Tripp’s attorneys, disputed the narrative constructed in the John Doe complaint.
He told the Daily Beast that “quotes from text message strings are not the best way to weave a tale” and said that the suit cherry-picked exchanges without mentioning that texts had been deleted.
Godwin, who would not confirm that Tata is the “John Doe” in the lawsuit, said that, “The facts will come out and there won’t be any confusion as to who’s who and who’s done what.”
The lawsuit, he said, is a “full frontal assault by very powerful people against a very vulnerable individual who is just trying to make a living.”
Tripp’s X account, @starheal, has more than 123,000 followers and posts frequently about both astrology and politics.
On Thursday, she posted, “Venus is at the Mercury-Mars midpoint. ‘Quick decisions in love matters, tendency to quickly fall in love. Exaggerating or fighting over relationship issues, fighting over a beloved woman.’”
On her website, Tripp offers $200 an hour consultations to deliver products, including Best Date Analyses, Birthday Reports, and Relationship Reports.
On Thursday, in a since-deleted tweet, Tripp seemed to cryptically refer to the lawsuit.
“Coercive controllers love to humiliate their victims and put them in double binds (orchestrated situations that no matter what they do it’s bad for them),” she wrote
While he was in the military, the Army’s Office of Inspector General found that Tata engaged in three extramarital affairs during his first marriage and fathered a son out of wedlock.
Tata did not contest the report’s findings.
Representatives for Tata did not respond to an immediate request for comment.
The lawyer listed for Tata in his restraining order request works for the attorney representing “John Doe” in the harassment lawsuit. The latter attorney, Paul Turner, would not confirm that Tata is John Doe when reached by The Cut.
In a statement to the Daily Beast, Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell wrote, “Under Secretary Tata has the complete and total confidence of Secretary Hegseth in his role and will continue to have his support.”
“Mr. Tata has done a fantastic job delivering on the priorities of this Department and this administration. We strongly stand by him.”
