Congressman Alan Grayson (D-FL) was in an Orange County, Florida court on Monday for the latest round in his messy divorce battle with his estranged wife and mother of his five children, Lolita.
Grayson, a multimillionaire trial attorney, is seeking an annulment, which would allow him to deny paying alimony. Lolita is accused of failing to properly get divorced from her first husband before marrying Grayson, and admitted to bigamy at a previous hearing. According to a report by WFTV-Orlando, the couple were close to an agreement, but only Grayson had signed it.
WFTV reporter Kathi Belich questioned Grayson after the hearing. “I’ll sum it up for you: Gold diggers gotta dig,” said Grayson. “We had an agreement. She’s trying to renege.”
Belich followed Lolita out of the courtroom and asked her if she was a gold digger. Lolita’s only reply was to laugh and continue walking.
Grayson’s annoyance may be partly due to the mounting legal fees for the case. Grayson is responsible for paying Lolita’s attorneys’ fees while the case is still in process, a common occurrence in divorce cases when the spouse did not work or made significantly less. On Monday, Lolita showed up with a new attorney, her sixth so far since she first filed for divorce early last year.
The case has generated a number of bizarre headlines. Lolita’s initial court filings accused Grayson of infidelity and domestic violence, although video evidence cleared him of the latter. The pleadings also continued lurid details about the couple’s sex life, leading the WFTV anchor to jokingly refer to “Fifty Shades of Grayson.”
Grayson himself is no stranger to controversy. After he was first elected to Congress in 2008, he called a female lobbyist a “K-Street whore” and accused Republicans opposed to Obamacare of wanting Americans to “die quickly.” He lost his 2010 re-election bid against challenger Rep. Daniel Webster (R-FL), the former Speaker of the Florida House who he called “Taliban Dan.” Redistricting gave Grayson a second chance at Congress, and he was elected in 2012 from a new district, a seat which he still holds.
Currently, Grayson is contemplating running for Senate in 2016. Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-FL) has already entered the race, and Grayson has been increasingly outspoken at what he views as an attempt by the Democratic establishment to bully him out of the race. Earlier this month, he launched a profanity-laden tirade at a reporter, saying that his story was s “a whole ‘nother level of bullsh**” and asking him if he was “some kind of sh**ing robot” who went around “sh***ing on people.”
A poll last month showed that the race was wide open, with 23 percent of Florida Democrats preferring Murphy, 14 percent Grayson, and the vast majority—63 percent—still undecided.
Follow Sarah Rumpf on Twitter @rumpfshaker.
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