U.S. Senator Marco Rubio's Southwest Florida regional director was arrested at a Quality Inn hotel in Fort Myers after his wife alleged he rolled her up in a carpet and kicked and punched her during a Friday night altercation at their home, according to the Lee County Sheriff's Office.
Michael J. Brennan, 39, had been placed on administrative leave but tendered his resignation Monday afternoon, the Miami-based freshman senator's spokesman Alex Conant told Politico.
34-year-old Kelly Brennan told deputies that she and her husband were arguing as they drove up to their Bonita Springs home Friday night. While a babysitter was inside with the couple's sleeping children, she said, her husband shoved her to the floor of the garage.
"Kelly states she landed on top of a rug that was lying on the garage floor...she acted as she had passed out when she landed," read the arresting officer's report. "Kelly states Michael then began to roll her up into the carpet 'as if I was dead or something'... Michael then began to kick and punch at the carpet with her still wrapped in it."
According to police, Kelly Brennan said that when she heard her husband leave the garage and head into the house, she unrolled herself from the carpet and went inside to confront him. She told investigators that in front of the babysitter, Michael Brennan accused her of lying and she asked him to leave the house.
But the babysitter left first, Kelly Brennan said, and her husband shortly pushed her into the corner of a wall, cutting her elbow and causing it to swell.
Though she later told police she had changed her mind about pressing charges, asking them to let Michael Brennan go, deputies observed that there was blood on the wall at elbow height that appeared to match Kelly Brennan's story. After it was determined through online banking records that Brennan had checked into the Quality Inn, deputies arrested him on a battery charge based on the couples' statements and visible injuries. According to online jail records, Brennan posted $1,000 bond on Saturday.
His attorney, Michelle Hill, told the Associated Press the allegations are false. According to Politico, Brennan had run the rising Republican star's Naples office since 2010.