Mayor Kilpatrick, chief of staff lied under oath, text messages show
Quote:
Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and his chief of staff lied about their relationship last summer at a police whistle-blower trial that has cost the cash-strapped city more than $9 million, according to records obtained by the Free Press.
The false testimony potentially exposes them to felony perjury charges, legal experts say.
Kilpatrick and chief of staff Christine Beatty denied during testimony in August that they had a sexual relationship. But the records, a series of text messages, show them engaged in romantic banter as well as planning and recounting sexual liaisons.
The messages are also at odds with the pair's trial testimony that they did not fire Deputy Police Chief Gary Brown in 2003, an ouster that led him to sue. The text messages show Beatty recalling the "decision that we made to fire Gary Brown."
The newspaper examined nearly 14,000 text messages on Beatty's city-issued pager. The exchanges, which the Free Press obtained after the trial, cover two months each in 2002 and 2003.
The Kilpatrick-Beatty relationship and Brown's dismissal were central to the whistle-blower suit filed by Brown and Harold Nelthrope, a former police officer and mayoral bodyguard. The two cops accused Kilpatrick of retaliating against them because of their roles in an internal affairs investigation of the mayor's security team -- a probe that potentially could have exposed the affair.
The Free Press sought interviews with Kilpatrick and Beatty, but they declined.
Late Wednesday, the mayor released a statement that said the text messages were "profoundly embarrassing" and "reflect a very difficult period" in his life.
"My wife and I worked our way through these intensely personal issues years ago," he wrote.
The mayor's statement did not address his or Beatty's trial testimony.
The text messages cover a range of issues, from the daily minutiae of city business to political gossip to the latest doings on "American Idol." Kilpatrick and Beatty, both 37, exchanged personal messages almost daily, including romantic notes.
"I'm madly in love with you," Kilpatrick wrote on Oct. 3, 2002.
"I hope you feel that way for a long time," Beatty answered. "In case you haven't noticed, I am madly in love with you, too!"
Other texts contain sexual content, like this exchange on April 8, 2003:
Beatty: "And, did you miss me, sexually?"
Kilpatrick: "Hell yeah! You couldn't tell. I want some more. "
SkyTel, the Mississippi-based company that provided text devices to the city, confirmed the existence of messages to the Free Press.
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Real nice guy...perjury charges, too..."Clintonesque" even...
What a "culture of corruption" these Republi...
What's that?...He's a Democrat?!?!?!!?
You wouldn't know by this article...No mention of party whatsoever...
And heaven forbid they let their readers know that
this is the very same guy who SPOKE at the 2004 Democratic Convention along with Obamessiah and is the the Vice President of the National Conference of Democratic Mayors and its representative to the Democratic National Committee...
He's got the wrong letter at the end of his name for this to be made public, so let's keep a lid on it, okay?...
01-25-2008, 03:56 AM
Mayor Kilpatrick, chief of staff lied under oath, text messages show
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