Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick caught in sex scandal

Detroit’s corruptocrat mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, known for – among other things – using taxpayer money to fund his lavish lifestyle, as well as throwing the microphones of reporters across the room when questioned about it, is in a heap of trouble this week and is expected to be arraigned today on the felony charges related to a sex scandal:

DETROIT (AP) β€” Six years after being sworn into office with hopes of revitalizing his troubled city, Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick is under increasing pressure to resign now that he’s been booked on charges of lying about steamy text messages with his former chief of staff.

The former aide, Christine Beatty, went through the same booking process, the first step in criminal arraignments scheduled for Tuesday afternoon.

Attorneys for Kilpatrick and Beatty said Monday their clients would be exonerated.

Both were accused of multiple counts of perjury, conspiracy, obstruction of justice and misconduct in a scandal that is threatening to prematurely end Kilpatrick’s second term as mayor of Detroit, a city of 900,000 with deeply entrenched poverty made worse by the downturn in the auto industry.

Kilpatrick met with the leaders of several philanthropic organizations Tuesday morning, just hours before his arraignment.

Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy announced the charges after an investigation that began in late January after the Detroit Free Press published excerpts from 14,000 text messages that were sent or received in 2002-03 from Beatty’s city-issued pager.

The messages called into question testimony Kilpatrick and Beatty gave last August in a lawsuit filed by two police officers who said they were fired for investigating claims that the mayor used his security unit to cover up extramarital affairs.

In court, Kilpatrick and Beatty strongly denied having an intimate relationship. But the text messages revealed a flirty, sometimes sexually explicit, dialogue about where to meet and how to conceal their trysts.

Kilpatrick, 37, is married with three children. Beatty, also 37, was married at the time and has two children.

The city eventually agreed to pay $8.4 million to the two officers and a third former officer. Some of the charges brought against the mayor accuse him of agreeing to the settlement in an effort to keep the text messages from becoming public.

The “Hip Hop” mayor, as he was known in Detroit, apparently doesn’t rank fidelity high on his list of priorities. Not only was he cheating on his wife with Beatty, but earlier this year he was caught in NC on a cozy trip with another woman:

DETROIT (tPC) — Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick is in the news again, and again, it’s for all the wrong reasons. Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick allegedly soaked in a luxury resort hot tub and got a massage with a woman named Carmen Slowski, according to a report by WXYZ-TV Channel 7.

Slowski is not the Mayor’s wife.

Kilpatrick is under increasing pressure to step down, but vows to stay on and fight, claiming he will be “exonerated.” I don’t think so. Kilpatrick promised the city of Detroit that he would lead the way in reforms and growth, but in reality what he’s done is use the taxpayer money as his own personal slush fund and city employees as his cover-up machine for his extramarital affairs. He should take the Spitzer route, and acknowledge his wrongdoing and step aside.

And speaking of Spitzer, is the newly-sworn in David Paterson being a little too candid about his private life? First there were the admissions that both he and his wife had engaged in extra-marital affairs years ago. Shortly thereafter, the NY Post reported that Paterson helped a woman who claimed to have a recent “close personal relationship” with him get a job with the city. Today we find out he’s admitted to using illegal drugs in the 70s.

Honesty, of course, is always the best policy, but can being too candid about your checkered past be, in some instances, just as detrimental as not being upfront enough?

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