Arizona Democratic candidate Bernadette Greene-Placentia reports being raped while repairing campaign sign

Arizona Congressional Candidate Reports Sexual Assault While Repairing Campaign Sign

A Democratic congressional candidate in Arizona says she was sexually assaulted while attempting to repair one of her campaign signs.

According to the Phoenix New Times, Bernadette Greene-Placentia, the Democratic nominee in Arizona's 8th congressional district challenging incumbent Republican Representative Abe Hamadeh, reported being struck on the head in a dark parking lot in Sun City, Arizona, just after 2 a.m. on a Friday this summer. She had been walking to a damaged sign when the attack occurred. She awoke to her rapist pulling his penis out of her, she told the publication.

"He said, '—ic bitch, not a very good fuck,'" Greene-Placentia told the New Times, which she interpreted as "Democratic bitch." She is not certain of the exact wording.

One leg was out of her jeans, and she recalls swinging her leg after another man approached. She heard him say, "Not even worth it," before he left. She was left face-down in the parking lot, her SUV still running with the trunk open. Greene-Placentia does not remember putting her jeans back on, closing the SUV's trunk, or leaving the scene to return home.

"It's just these little tiny flashes of things that I do remember," she told the newspaper. "As much as I don't want to remember, I've tried very, very hard to remember more stuff. But that's where I'm at."

Greene-Placentia said she had previously stopped to fix her campaign signs late at night numerous times, sometimes with her husband, Alex Placentia, or a campaign staffer. She has not done so since the assault. She believes she suffered a concussion and reported being covered in bruises after the attack.

Initially, Greene-Placentia tried to forget the incident, but she said she decided to report it because she campaigns on fighting for the people of Arizona, "and I didn't feel like I could keep saying that if I weren't also fighting for women that are victims of sexual assault." She told her campaign staff about it the following Sunday and her husband on Monday. Two weeks later, she reported the rape to the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office, according to a police report.

For two days after the assault, Greene-Placentia was "missing in action," her campaign manager Isaiah Lopez and her husband told the New Times. She vaginally bled for three days after the rape, according to the police report. She said she was a "very angry person" for days and weeks afterward.

"I want a fucking rematch. I want to call them out. I want to like, go on TV and say 'Let's go again and don't come at me from behind,'" she told Lopez and her husband. Her campaign held a staff meeting at a gun range because she felt so angry.

Hamadeh has yet to comment on the alleged rape, but in July, he defended right-wing influencers Andrew and Tristan Tate, who are accused of strangling women unconscious and raping them and face charges of sexual assault, sexual exploitation, and child pornography in Europe.

Greene-Placentia is vowing to press ahead with her campaign.

"I need to let women know that it's okay to talk about it," Greene-Placentia told the New Times. "We're asking people to stand up and donate or volunteer. We're asking those folks to be uncomfortable, as [Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes] says; then I have to be willing to be uncomfortable too."

Colorado GOP Gubernatorial Nominee Admits to Shoving Wife, Says He'd Do It Again

Colorado minister and Republican gubernatorial nominee Victor Marx has declared that he shoved his wife in the past—and he'd do it again.

The admission came during a campaign video call with his supporters Tuesday evening, during which Marx confessed that he pushed his wife against a door, supposedly to teach her a lesson about self-defense.

"Show the before and after; they don't want the full truth—that my wife was fake-crying, suckered me in," Marx told his donors. "I was like, 'Oh my gosh are you OK?' and she does a spinning back kick into my [groin]. I was like, 'OK, you actually can protect yourself,'" Marx recalled.

Marx's wife, Eileen, then appeared on camera, placing her arms around his neck while claiming that she performed a "rear choke" defense.

Both Marx and his wife have black belts in karate.

"People have called us the real Mr. and Mrs. Smith," Marx claimed, referring to the 2005 film starring Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. "How many wives actually grab a backpack and put a tomahawk, night vision, put a grenade in their coat pocket—we're not normal."

"I'd do it again," he proclaimed. "I'd do everything again except get close to her to let her kick me, because she's sneaky."

Marx similarly admitted to the allegations during a local radio interview on Friday, claiming that he had shoved his wife "just to startle her" and reiterated that she was "fake-crying." In the same interview, Eileen Marx said she did not believe the rough encounters with her husband constituted domestic abuse but that they had instead reminded her that she does "need to train."

"What he did—eight years after that, I got my first-degree black belt," Eileen Marx said, noting in other portions of the interview that she grew up in an abusive home and that the incident with her own husband had inspired her to start teaching women's self-defense classes.

"This was nothing like domestic abuse. This was a karate lesson in our house," Eileen Marx told the radio show.

Marx has repeatedly claimed that the media has unfairly pegged him as a domestic abuser—but in truth, Marx has been telling variations of this story for years, some much more disturbing than the latest iteration. In 2021, the former Marine turned priest laughed while recalling "grabbing her and slamming" his wife after she suggested that he could protect her.

"It was a decent push," he said at the time, beaming. "She hit that and started crying, bent over, facing the opposite way."

Still, that is not the only abuse allegation facing the Republican gubernatorial hopeful: Marx has also been accused of throwing his toddler across a room and pulling a knife on a psychiatrist attempting to treat him.

On the radio, Marx said both stories were true.

Recalling the incident with his small son, Marx said he "grabbed" his son because the child was "hurting his sister."

"I picked him up, launched him, onto his bed," Marx said. "That's when he started crying."

Marx said he initially shared the story as a warning for young fathers who are struggling to parent and do things "they don't want to do," urging people to get psychiatric help.

"I did not hurt my son," Marx insisted.

The couple are the co-founders of All Things Possible ministry, an entity that critics have derided as a "potentially dangerous" operation, according to a September report by The Guardian. In the last year, the group has funded out-of-state surveillance projects and hired private security contractors. It is also connected to a "network of other self-appointed sex-trafficking rescue groups whose leading figures have attracted significant controversy," according to The Guardian.

Marx was the chair and president of All Things Possible until his bid to become Colorado's next governor commenced last October.

In June, Marx claimed during a local TV interview that he was forced to kill someone when he was seven years old. When pressed if he had killed more people, Marx responded: "Does it matter?"

DOJ Civil Rights Division Hiring Lawyers with Criminal Records, Misconduct Allegations

The Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division is resorting to hiring lawyers with criminal records, misconduct allegations, and a love of conspiracy theories to fill vacancies, according to The New York Times.

The office has hired such individuals to fill the void left by the departure of nearly 300 career, nonpartisan employees following the start of President Trump's second term and his hiring of conservative activist Harmeet Dhillon to lead the bureau.

Among the new hires:

• David Michael Levin: A conservative lawyer convicted of hacking into the Lee County, Florida, election system in 2015 and 2016 as a political stunt. Levin served a 20-day jail sentence with two years of probation. DOJ policy allows for people with misdemeanor convictions to be hired after a seven-year gap. Last month, another court ordered Levin to pay more than $200,000 in damages after finding he had engaged in fraudulent misrepresentation and civil conspiracy in a case involving insurance fraud.

• David Vandenberg: A prosecutor with a history of complaints of volatile and angry behavior toward his colleagues as an assistant district attorney in El Paso, Texas. A local judge barred him from a courtroom for dressing down a court official. He is now facing animal neglect charges.

• James Breslo: A former gambling executive who used to host the podcast Hidden Truth. His podcast attacked Alcoholics Anonymous in an episode titled "AA Kills," examined UFOs, and hosted bigot Laura Loomer, who pushed unproven claims that the 2017 Las Vegas strip mass shooting was a plot by the government or religious terrorists.

• Daniel Flickinger: Lost his job at a Birmingham, Alabama, law firm in 2020 for saying in a Facebook post that it was good that George Floyd died in a "fentanyl- and methamphetamine-numbed strangulation" because "it meant being worshiped in a nationwide funeral."

Dhillon has defended these people and the other 130 new hires during her tenure, saying in a statement, "For years, the civil rights division recruited from a narrow pipeline of progressive activists and called it excellence."

"We are hiring trial lawyers," Dhillon said. "The attorneys The Times singled out have collectively tried hundreds of cases, prosecuted those who prey on trafficked children, won at the Supreme Court and practiced law for decades. That is the experience this division needs to enforce civil rights laws for every American."

Meanwhile, Dhillon has willingly joined the Trump administration's attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion, even dropping multiple school desegregation cases.

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