(BLOOMINGTON, Minn.) — A Minnesota Republican state senator was arrested on Monday for soliciting a minor, according to the Bloomington Police Department.
Justin David Eichorn, the Republican state senator for District 6, believed he was communicating online with a 17-year-old girl, but in reality was talking to a police officer, officials said in a statement on Tuesday.
After the detective arranged to meet with Eichorn on Monday in Bloomington, Minnesota, the 40-year-old lawmaker arrived in a pickup truck and was “arrested without incident,” police said.
The senator was booked into the Bloomington Police Department jail and will be transported to Hennepin County Adult Detention Center, police said.
The charges that Eichorn faces for “soliciting under 18-year-old to practice prostitution” are pending from the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office, police said.
“As a 40-year-old man, if you come to the Orange Jumpsuit District 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 statement.
Hodges also urged state legislators to “take this case and this type of conduct more seriously.”
After Eichorn’s arrest, both Republican and Democratic lawmakers in Minnesota have called for his resignation.
“We are shocked by these reports and this alleged conduct demands an immediate resignation. Justin has a difficult road ahead and he needs to focus on his family,” Minnesota Senate Republicans said in a statement.
House Republican leaders Speaker Lisa Demuth and Leader Harry Niska also demanded for Eichorn’s resignation.
“Given the seriousness of the charges, Senator Eichorn should resign. While he is entitled to due process, we must hold legislators to a higher standard,” Demuth and Niska said in a joint statement.
The Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party also condemned Eichorn’s actions, saying “no one who solicits children belongs anywhere near public office or the State Capitol.”
“The facts presented by the Bloomington Police Department make it clear that Senator Eichorn is an immediate danger to the public and must resign immediately,” Minnesota DFL Executive Director Heidi Kraus Kaplan said in a statement.
Eichorn was also one of the senators to recently introduce a bill labeling “Trump Derangement Syndrome” as a form of mental illness.
The bill defines “Trump Derangement Syndrome” as “acute onset paranoia in otherwise normal persons that is in reaction to the policies and presidencies of President Donald J. Trump.”
Symptoms for “Trump Derangement Syndrome” include “verbal expressions of intense hostility” toward Trump and “overt acts of aggression and violence against anyone supporting” Trump or anything that symbolizes Trump, the bill said.
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