'Not a drag queen': Internet buries GOP lawmaker arrested for allegedly soliciting a minor

18 March

A high-ranking Republican state senator in Minnesota was arrested Tuesday for allegedly trying to meet a teenage girl for sex. He's now battling calls from within his own party to resign along with the pending legal charges.

The Minnesota Reformer reported Tuesday that 40 year-old state senator Justin Eichorn — who previously chaired the Senate Mining and Forest Policy Committee — was arrested in Bloomington (a suburb of the Minneapolis-St. Paul area) while waiting in his truck for what he believed to be a 16 year-old girl. The Minnesota Senate Republican Caucus stated that it was "shocked" by the allegation and that the three-term lawmaker should resign from his office and "focus on his family." Eichorn is married with four children.

“As a 40-year-old man, if you come ... looking to have sex with someone’s child, you can expect that we are going to lock you up,” Bloomington Police Chief Booker Hodges said in a press release. "I have always advocated stiffer penalties for these types of offenses ... We need our state Legislature to take this case and this type of conduct more seriously."

Eichorn's arrest came just hours after he filed legislation to designate opposition to President Donald Trump as a "derangement syndrome." He also co-sponsored legislation earlier this week aimed at banning transgender women from female sports. And earlier this month, Eichorn posted a photo to his Facebook page of anti-trans activist Riley Gaines at a "save women's sports" rally. Following his arrest, administrators of Eichorn's page have limited who can comment on his posts.

News of the lawmaker's arrest was met with widespread mockery and ridicule on social media. Democratic operative Kate Holder wrote on Bluesky: "All they do is projection." Writer Cooper Lund posted Eichorn's mugshot and piled on, writing: "If I was a pervert I would grow a beard so I didn't look like I was mega guilty in my mugshot after getting busted the night before and not having been able to shave." Author Craig Schaefer observed that despite repeated unfounded accusations from the far right that transgender people and drag queens are groomers of children, Eichorn is "not a transgender person, not a drag queen."

"An old line, about child abusers who turn out to be the exact monsters who obsess over pedophelia[sic] and blame the wrong people, but in this case a LITERAL REPUBLICAN SENATOR," Schaefer wrote.

"Not at all shocking," Kansas-based attorney Ron Nelson wrote on Bluesky. "Those who yell 'groomer' are most certainly the groomers."

Click here to read the Minnesota Reformer's article in full.

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