Rubio's Sketchy Pal David Rivera Probed Over Ana Alliegro's Battery Claims

David Rivera is the absolute last name Marco Rubio wanted to see in headlines four days before the biggest election of his life. That's because whenever the former U.S. representative and longtime Rubio buddy makes the news, it's for increasingly sordid allegations and federal investigations.

Today is no different. Rivera is now the subject of an ongoing Miami Police probe after his on-again, off-again girlfriend — self-described "Republican bad girl" Ana Alliegro, whose own bizarre scandal helped sink Rivera's congressional career — told police he battered her after refusing to leave her house.

Rivera heartily denies those allegations. In fact, he says he wasn't even in Miami at the time Alliegro called police and insists that "she will be prosecuted for perjury and filing a false police report."

According to a police report, the odd incident took place this past February 25 at Alliegro's home. She told officers that "Rivera called early that morning stating he's driving down from Tallahassee." He arrived at her house and began "banging on the door," so she let him in, and they "started talking about politics." 

The reunion went south, Alliegro told police, when she asked Rivera to leave. Instead, he went to sleep and Alliegro began taking pictures of him. Rivera then leapt up and ran to his car, where Alliegro continued photographing him. That's when he "grabbed her left wrist with his left hand," snatched her cell phone, and fled.

Rivera says the whole story is bogus. In an email to the Miami Herald, he writes, "Unfortunately for Crazy Ana, I was in Tallahassee when she says she was supposedly stalked, and I have witnesses attesting to that." He also said she had threatened suicide if he wouldn't drive to Miami to see her.

There are some gaps in Alliegro's allegations. The police report notes she changed her story, first saying her door was unlocked and then admitting she let Rivera in. The next day, a judge refused to grant her a restraining order against Rivera. And Alliegro's father, who lives in an adjacent apartment, told the daily he didn't hear any fighting.

Either way, the claims are just the latest in an unending saga surrounding Rivera, who Rubio surely wishes would walk slowly into the sea, never to be seen again. 

If you're new to Miami, think of Alliegro and Rivera as the Bonnie and Clyde of local politics. Rivera was once an up-and-coming rep in the Florida House when young Marco Rubio was first making his mark. The two were tight, even sharing a house together in Tallahassee.

But as Marco transformed into a GOP golden boy, Rivera began tripping into a never-ending series of scandals, from lying about working for USAID to possibly crashing into a mail truck to prevent his opponents' attack ads from reaching voters and allegedly accepting a secret $500,000 payout from a dog track. 

None of that stopped Rivera from winning a U.S. House seat in 2010. That's where Alliegro enters the picture. The longtime GOP operative and sometimes girlfriend of Rivera's cooked up a scheme to help win his 2012 reelection campaign: running a fake Democrat in the primary to derail opponent Joe Garcia. 

The plot flopped, and prosecutors zeroed in on the plan. Alliegro fled to Nicaragua, where New Times tracked her down in 2013. Although a judge went light on her specifically because he believed Rivera was the real mastermind of the plan, the ex-congressman has never been charged in the case.

Now he'll have to deal with the new allegations from Alliegro herself.