An aspiring Minnesota Republican lawmaker has been arrested on assault and bodily harm charges – a year after being accused of fraud.
Marisa Simonetti, 30, who has been running on a ‘Rebuilding Safety through Family Values’ campaign for this year’s election was taken into custody yesterday.
The Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office has charged Simonetti fifth degree assault charges and domestic assault.
According to reports, the aspiring congresswoman was also charged with a felony count of financial card fraud against her former lover last year.
She remains in custody as of now at the Hennepin County Adult Detention Center and no bail amount has been set yet.
Simonetti is set to appear in court on Monday for an initial hearing.
DailyMail.com has reached out to the Sheriff’s Office for more information about the allegations.
The aspiring lawmaker’s campaign page describes her as the only conservative candidate in the race who hopes to rebuild safety through family values.
In an effort to promote her campaign message and gain support, Simonetti once posted a video on X saying that having ‘low standards is selfish’ and how tired she is of hearing that ‘Minnesota is an embarrassment’.
But despite utilizing classic GOP election strategies, she has already lost the May 14 special election for the vacant District 6 seat on the county board to State Representative Heather Edelson.
She was campaigning to become one of the seven Hennepin County Board commissioners who are tasked to approve budgets for both the county attorney and sheriff offices.
Despite the loss, Simonetti has previously indicated that she will once again compete against Edelson in the upcoming November election.
Previously, the conservative candidate had been accused of making transactions on the victim’s financial cards and accounts in amounts totaling $75,000 and $8,876.
The felony charges were ultimately dropped after the victim refused to cooperate with prosecutors.
This comes months after Las Vegas police began investigations into WWE wrestler-turned GOP Congressional candidate Dan Rodimer for allegedly murdering a man who offered his stepdaughter cocaine at a hotel room party in October.
The former wrestling star turned himself in after he was accused of murdering Christopher Tapp, 47, at a Vegas hotel Halloween party last year.
Tapp was a recently exonerated man who had served 20 years in prison after being wrongfully convicted of killing his friend in 1996.
He and Rodimer, who was endorsed by Donald Trump during a failed Nevada campaign bid, reportedly knew each other through Vegas’ classic car and racing circuit.
An arrest warrant claims the alleged cocaine-fueled killing came after Rodimer, dressed as ‘Ken’ from the Barbie movie, became enraged by the offer of narcotics to his stepdaughter, whose name and age is not known.
Tapp’s death at Vegas’ Resorts World suite was initially ruled as an accident, but the Clark County Coroner’s Office later determined it a homicide after discovering ‘blunt force trauma’ to his head.
According to the reported arrest filing, a second witness claimed she saw the former wrestler ‘knock Christopher to the ground, at which time Christopher’s head hit a small table.’
They claimed he then ‘proceeded to punch Christopher throughout his head and body’.
Originally from Rockaway, New Jersey, Rodimer became a wrestler after winning the 2004 WWE’s Tough Enough contest, eventually going on to wrestle on its RAW brand under the name Dan Rodimer.
In 2020, he challenged Democratic Rep. Susie Lee for her District 3 seat in Nevada and lost by 13,000 votes.
He later moved to Texas to run as a Republican in a District 6 special election with the slogan, ‘Vote Big Dan’, where he was thrashed once again gaining just over 2,000 votes, equal to 2.7 percent of the ballot.
In 2020, he received Trump’s full endorsement, with the former president tweeting at the time: ‘A former professional wrestler, he will fight for Lower Taxes, Better Education and More Jobs, and he will always support our Brave Law Enforcement. Dan has my Complete and Total Endorsement!’
Rodimer’s bio on Instagram states he is a law school graduate, and his wrestling fan page indicates he attended the University of South Florida, where he was a member of Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity and played football for the school.
He also had a semi-pro football career for the Tampa Bay Barracudas, played for Arena Football League, and worked as a personal trainer, according to the page.