Rep. Steve Stockman’s gross campaign office may turn out to just be the first in a series.
The OC Weekly on Thursday published a report on the “horrific pigsty” that Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) left behind in a Costa Mesa, Calif. home he lived in from 2010 to 2012. And there are photographs.
According to the newspaper, Rohrabacher moved into the four-bedroom, four-bathroom, 6,300-square-foot home on April Fool’s Day 2010. Rent was $3,350 a month. The carpets were new, and the backyard featured “thriving” flowers, plants, and grass. But when homeowner Robert Polyniak’s longtime girlfriend, Darlene Whitsell, entered the home shortly after the Rohrabachers left the property, things looked different.
“It was disgusting,” Whitsell told the OC Weekly. “It was unbelievable. Who lives like that?”
Among the damage: the carpeting was covered in “massive black stains and muck;” appliances were damaged and rusted; the plants outside had dried up and died; there were holes in the walls; every toilet seat in the house was broken; light switches and doors had been cracked; an overflowing tub cracked a ceiling with water damage; phone lines were “strangely severed;” and more.
Invoices reviewed by the OC Weekly showed the damage totaled more than $25,800. Polyniak deducted the $6,700 security deposit and sent Rohrabacher a bill for the rest. Then Rohrabacher got the courts involved.
In a lawsuit filed in Orange County Superior Court in August 2013, Rohrabacher claimed that Polyniak had failed to refund his security deposit in a timely manner. And he wants Polyniak to pay him $20,000. In September, Polyniak filed a cross-complaint, alleging that the Rohrabachers “failed to perform their obligations under the lease and have breached the terms and conditions of the lease in numerous, material ways.”
A spokesperson for Rohrabacher did not respond to a request for comment from TPM.
Courtesy of OC Weekly, here are some of the pictures taken by Whitsell of the house after Rohrabacher left:
See even more of the grime at the OC Weekly.
