Rep. Grayson called cops on wife for allegedly using his credit card
By Marc Caputo
| 05/20/15
Florida Rep. Alan Grayson recently called his estranged wife a “gold digger,†but a review of the potential Senate candidate’s soap-opera divorce case shows he unsuccessfully tried to have her criminally charged for far less: ringing up grocery, gasoline and car-repair expenses on his credit card.
Grayson’s previously unreported effort to have Lolita Grayson arrested on credit-card fraud charges was revealed in one of her court filings that complained about the wealthy Democrat’s tactics to withhold money from her.
In previous court filings and interviews, Lolita Grayson, who’s now on her sixth lawyer, has depicted Grayson as abusive and so tight-fisted that she and their four minor children had to go on food stamps. She said she couldn’t afford to repair a leaky septic tank and broken windows that allowed mold to fester in the family’s Orlando home. Her situation and the corresponding images of the home’s disrepair aired on local TV in October 2014, just before Grayson — a trial lawyer worth about $31 million — won reelection to a third term in the House.
Grayson has told others that he doesn’t believe his headline-grabbing divorce case — replete with allegations of bigamy, mistresses, cruelty and a delay caused by a leaky breast implant — will be too much of a distraction if he ultimately decides to run for statewide office. But critics in his own party disagree, saying it exposes unpleasant aspects of the firebrand congressman’s temperament that could turn off women in a year when Democrats hope their candidates are buoyed by Hillary Clinton at the top of the ticket.
About the time she was on food stamps and showing reporters the mold in her family home, she had begun using her husband’s Bank of America credit card, which he left behind after he moved out of the family home in December 2013. The $8,695.29 worth of charges Lolita Grayson racked up on the credit card between Sept. 29 and Oct. 20 last year appeared to be for typical living expenses. The largest charge: nearly $5,900 at Universal Service Center, an Orlando auto-repair store. She spent about $2,300 on groceries and related items at Publix, Whole Foods and Wal-Mart. She dropped $270 at gas stations and about $288 at restaurants — from a $104 charge at Bravo Dellagio in Orlando to $17.17 at a Dunkin Donuts/Baskin Robbins and $15.40 at Planet Smoothie.
Alan Grayson noticed the charges in October but said nothing until January 2015, when he called Orange County sheriff’s deputies to complain in a fruitless effort to cause Lolita Grayson trouble.