A newly elected Republican congresswoman is engaged in a legal battle back home with political enemies who claim she's a witch.
A letter obtained by The Daily Beast shows Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) has hired the law firm Holland & Knight to go after Michael Tito, an ally of Roger Stone who considered a primary challenge against her, over a series of bizarre claims about her on the Tampa-based "Bubba the Love Sponge" radio show, reported The Daily Beast.
“I am sending you this letter because of the defamatory statements you made about Ms. Luna on the Show,” wrote attorney David J. Lisko in the Oct. 7 letter.
The letter claims Tito knew his allegations, which including claims that Luna practices witchcraft, was fired from her job and had a sexual liaison with Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), and said the former Marine Corps captain had exercised "gross negligence" in making statements about her that were "unlikely to be true.”
“You are hereby demanded to publicly and immediately retract each and every defamatory statement you made about Ms. Luna on the show,” Lisko continued. “Because you do not have the ability to distribute your retraction widely on your social media, you are demanded to apologize and retract your statements on the "Bubba the Love Sponge Show" or by making a retraction and apology video that you send to me that Ms. Luna will distribute via her social media.”
Luna denied the allegations Tuesday, during her first day in the U.S. House of Representatives, but declined to comment further.
“Obviously not, I’m not doing any comments,” Luna said. “That’s not true.”
Tito insisted to The Daily Beast that he's not backing down from his statements, saying the witchcraft claims came from Hispanics for Trump associate Paloma Zuniga, who allegedly told him that Luna "puts spells on people."
“I didn’t wake up one morning when I was going on the 'Bubba the Love Sponge' show and say I am going to pull a bunch of stuff out of my ass and talk about it,” Tito told the website.
Another failed GOP congressional candidate, Omar Navarro of California, suggested the rumors might be accurate because so many people were talking about them.
“It has got to be true to a certain extent,” he told The Daily Beast. “It’s fair enough to say that it’s spread among people in the Republican Party.”
