It's a common misconception that former State Senator Hiram Monserrate was cast out of the senate for slashing his girlfriend's face with broken glass and dragging her through his building lobby by the hair. Sure, he was ultimately convicted on a misdemeanor charge of intending to injure Karla Giraldo, and surveillance footage seems to show a scene straight out of a Hagar the Horrible cartoon. But that's just what THEY want you to think, insists Giraldo, who has filed a $35 million lawsuit accusing prosecutors, cops and hospital staffers of conspiring to destroy her innocent beau.

Giraldo maintains that she was "accidentally injured while being brought a glass of water" by Monserrate. We hate it when that happens! And, like a true gentleman, she claims Monserrate immediately "transported" her to the E.R. Right again, because, technically, dragging someone by the hair is a mode of transport. According to court papers obtained by the Daily News, Giraldo alleges that while she was being stitched up at the hospital, workers "pressured her to say that Monserrate intentionally injured her during an altercation." Then detectives, eager to take down the Senator for reasons to be revealed in a future episode of the Hiram Files, got Giraldo to make false statements against Monserrate by "telling her he had other girlfriends and that his wife was at the stationhouse."

NYPD Detective Stephen Vessa, who worked with Monserrate when he was a cop, allegedly told Giraldo, "They're trying to flip you." The lawsuit alleges that "all of the defendants conspired among each other and with each other to unlawfully detain and prevent plaintiff from leaving the hospital... until she would falsely accuse her boyfriend of assaulting her." But they couldn't stop Giraldo and Monserrate getting back together, and not even that mysterious Cigarette-Smoking Man can get between them now. Giraldo wants $35 million to compensate her for emotional injuries, pain and suffering, humiliation and embarrassment.