Jennifer Arcuri could tour the UK on a speaking tour as Boris Johnson fights the general election before a stint on Dancing with the Stars in the US, it was revealed today.
The American businessman and former model, 34, says any appearances in Britain over the coming months will not touch on whether they had an affair.
Miss Arcuri, who lives in Los Angeles, also posted a tongue-in-cheek picture of her infamous poledancing pole, which she once hinted Mr Johnson had a go on during his visits to her Shoreditch flat, which doubled as her office.
She said: ‘I will not be the person to bring Boris Johnson down. I refuse to be a pawn’, adding she is upset about being portrayed as ‘some tart who got everything I did because I slept with this powerful man’.
But with lucrative speeches and reality TV appearances in the pipeline she said: ‘Apparently, I have lots of opportunities for the Jennifer Arcuri brand, whatever the f*** that means’.
It came as the Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport prepared to release the results of an internal investigation into why it gave a £100,000 grant to Miss Arcuri’s business, even though it is based outside Britain.
Jennifer Arcuri, 34, says any appearances in Britain over the coming months will not touch on whether she had an affair with Boris, who visited a Suffolk primary school today (right)
Miss Arcuri, who lives in Los Angeles, posted this tongue-in-cheek picture of the infamous poledancing pole in her London flat, which she once hinted Mr Johnson had a go on. She took the picture so is not in it
Boris Johnson and the blonde bombshell: Timeline of the rapidly-evolving scandal
MPs and LA members will assess the public monies disbursed to Jennifer Arcuri, pictured
September 22: The Sunday Times reports that Labour MP Jon Trickett wants Johnson to explain the allegation that he failed to declare potential conflicts of interest while London mayor in relation to the allocation of public money to American businesswoman Jennifer Arcuri.
September 23: Mr Johnson initially declines to comment on the allegations and also declines to comment on his relationship with Ms Arcuri. The PM is repeatedly questioned on a flight to New York for the UN General Assembly, but says ‘everything was done with complete propriety’.
September 24: Business Secretary Andrea Leadsom tells Radio 4’s Today programme that she is ‘comfortable’ with Mr Johnson’s assurances he had acted properly.
September 27: The Prime Minister says he will comply with a London Assembly order to explain his links to Ms Arcuri. He is referred to the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) to assess whether he should be investigated for the criminal offence of misconduct in public office while he was Mayor of London.
September 29: The Sunday Times reports that Ms Arcuri had told four friends she had an affair with Mr Johnson while he was London mayor. The Prime Minister tells Andrew Marr he had no interest to declare.
September 30: Mr Johnson insists allegations over his private life, including his links to Ms Arcuri and the allegation he squeezed the thigh of a female journalist, will not overshadow the Tory Party conference.
October 1: The Prime Minister tells LBC radio that allegations over his personal life had only come out because of some people’s intent to ‘frustrate’ Brexit.
October 3: Ms Arcuri tells the Daily Mail she had ‘every right’ to go on trade missions with Mr Johnson. She calls all the allegations false, saying she is a ‘legitimate businesswoman’.
October 6: The Sunday Times reports that leaked emails showed that Ms Arcuri had listed Mr Johnson as a reference in her application for a role in Tech City.
October 7: Ms Arcuri appears on ITV’s Good Morning Britain and refuses to deny she had an affair with Mr Johnson. She says the politician had visited her Shoreditch flat a ‘handful’ of times and called him ‘a really good friend’ but denied he ever showed her favouritism. Refusing to answer questions about the nature of her relationship with the then mayor of London, she said: ‘It’s really not anyone’s business what private life we had.’
October 8: Mr Johnson fails to meet the deadline to respond to questions by the London Assembly over his relationship with Ms Arcuri. The two-week deadline expired at 6pm without a response, the assembly said.
October 10: The London Assembly asks Mr Johnson to explain by October 21 why his response to a probe into his links to Ms Arcuri should be kept confidential.
October 31: DCMS releases report on £100,000 grant to Arcuri’s business, saying it was ‘appropriate’
Ms Arcuri used a revealing interview to admit the Prime Minister was fully aware of a potential conflict of interest in his relationship with her – but had shut her out rather than show her favouritism.
She told Bloomberg Businessweek: ‘He knew there was a potential for conflict, and this is why he never did anything.’
Miss Arcuri, who lives in California, has repeatedly refused to discuss allegations she had an affair with Mr Johnson, who was married to his second wife Marina at the time.
She said last night that they were close but it was not ‘some romantic thing’, adding: ‘What happened between me and Boris is no one’s business. I’ve done absolutely nothing wrong.’
The DCMS is on the brink of releasing report into award of £100,000 grant to her firm.
Questions have been raised in the Commons about the checks made before the grant was approved, because the company’s UK phone number was found by journalists to divert to California, where Miss Arcuri and her British husband and business partner are based.
Ministers have justified awarding the money – meant to be spent on improving IT skills in the UK – because the firm gave the British phone number.
Outgoing Culture Secretary Nicky Morgan said she had not seen a copy of the accounts for Miss Arcuri’s cyber security firm Hacker House or the initial application made by the US businesswoman.
But she has already conceded it would be a ‘serious matter’ if Arcuri had lied on her application.
Earlier this month a London City Hall probe into Boris Johnson’s links to Miss Arcuri has been put on pause in case he faces criminal charges.
An ‘oversight’ committee at the London Assembly had already begun probing the former London mayor’s links with Miss Arcuri, 34, an American entrepreneur who joined several overseas mayoral trips with him, and won grants totalling £126,000 for her technology firms.
But the City Hall inquiry was officially halted yesterday following a request from the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC).
Because the Prime Minister was responsible for London’s police while mayor, the IOPC has been asked to look into his conduct.
As it could turn into a criminal investigation, the London Assembly has agreed to stall its own inquiry to avoid prejudicing any case.
Mr Johnson has previously accused his ‘old friends’ in the London Assembly of ‘barking up the wrong tree’ with their investigation.
At the start of the month Boris Johnson was asked directly if they had a sexual relationship when he was the married mayor of London and she was a young entrepreneur who was given public money and preferential treatment.
He repeatedly dodged the affair question but when he was asked about misusing public money, he firmly answered ‘No’.
Mr Johnson, 55, faces four inquiries into whether he failed to declare a conflict of interest over the former model.
The blonde businesswoman and her technology firms have been awarded more than £126,000 of taxpayers’ money, and she was given special access to three overseas trade missions with the then mayor.
It then emerged that she received her coveted entrepreneur visa to work in the UK from a Whitehall scheme run by an official who used to work for Mr Johnson.
Miss Arcuri beat nearly 2,000 applicants to gain one of 200 sought-after Tier 1 entrepreneur visas on the Government’s Sirius programme.
Mr Johnson, 55, faces four inquiries into whether he failed to declare a conflict of interest over the former model, pictured together at the 2012 Back Boris campaign tour of London
In an extraordinary hour-long live interview on ITV’s Good Morning Britain, Miss Arcuri told presenters Piers Morgan and Susanna Reid: ‘Boris never, ever gave me favouritism.’
Pressed on whether their five-year friendship had been intimate, she declined to answer nine times, saying: ‘Because the Press have made me this objectified ex-model pole dancer, I’m really not going to answer that question. I’m not going to be putting myself in a position for you to weaponise my answer.’
Jennifer Arcuri has insisted the pair’s private life is private and said she never asked for, nor received, any favours
When Mr Morgan said this was not a denial, she nodded, adding: ‘I’m not answering.’
Speaking from Los Angeles, where she now lives, Miss Arcuri told how the pair bonded after meeting at a City summit when she moved to London in 2011.
She said Mr Johnson was ‘this guy that walks in the room with his hair all dishevelled, his shirt untucked… he proceeds to speak, suddenly he turns the entire room of grovelling, curmudgeonly, angry men into howling schoolgirls – it was just electrifying’.
In 2012, Miss Arcuri joined him on his battle bus as he campaigned for a second term as mayor. She recalled: ‘On the bus, he had a book of short stories. I think it was Voltaire, I remember striking up a conversation about classic literature and Shakespeare, we immediately bonded over this kind of mutual love of classic literature, and particularly Shakespeare.’
Mr Johnson asked for her phone number. ‘The first message – I was out with my friends – came in saying “Boris calling Jennifer”,’ she said. On the advice of her friends she stored his number under a code name. ‘I put him in as Alex the Great and that’s how he stayed.’
Mr Johnson visited her office-cum-apartment ‘a handful’ of times, maybe seven, she said, but his visits were often short.
She said Mr Johnson ‘really wanted to understand more about what was happening in California’ on the tech scene.
‘My Shoreditch office was on his way home,’ she said. ‘The dancing pole sat in the living room. Yes, he saw the pole. I made a joke once, if he wanted I could show him a few things. I asked him to have a go. It was a laugh and that was it. He sat down with his tea and started muttering.’