Current Events > AL governor expected to resign following affair with aide

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http://talkingpointsmemo.com/fivepoints/wildest-details-robert-bentley-alabama-governor-impeachment-report

Embattled Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley (R) may finally be giving up. AL.com reported that the governor, for whom impeachment hearings started Monday, is expected to step down this week over his elaborate efforts to conceal an alleged affair with a former aide that investigators say misappropriated state resources and ran afoul of ethics laws.

Bentley’s lawyers are now reportedly trying to ease his departure from the governor’s mansion. Sources told AL.com that those attorneys are engaged in negotiations to allow Bentley to resign from office and plead to lesser charges. The Alabama Ethics Commission last week determined that there was probable cause to believe the governor committed four felony violations of state ethics and campaign finance laws while carrying out the alleged dalliance with his former top advisor, Rebekah Mason (both have denied having a physical affair).

While Bentley maintained as recently as Friday that he has “done nothing illegal,” his attorneys failed to block the release of a damning, 131-page state House Judiciary Committee report laying out the state’s evidence.
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Dianne Bentley, who ended her 50-year marriage to the governor over the alleged affair, was subject to a grueling procession of humiliations as her husband’s rumored relationship with Mason escalated. As the report noted, “If Governor Bentley meant to hide his affair from his wife, he did not do it well.”
One such incident outlined in the report occurred in February 2014, when the governor’s staff, including Mason, accompanied the Bentleys to Washington, D.C. for a meeting of the National Governors Association. Bentley and Mason exchanged flirty text messages in plain view of his then-wife as their entourage ate dinner at Old Ebbitt Grill, and the group then departed to a local bar, where Mason shared a rather baffling anecdote.

Mason “bragged that Governor Bentley had called and told her that he had opened his hotel room door to hotel staff while clad in boxers, believing Mason was on the other side,” according to the report.
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Unbeknownst to the governor and Mason, the frequent romantic texts they exchanged were all visible to Dianne Bentley. The governor’s state-issued cell phone’s cloud was linked to his state-issued iPad, which he had gifted to his then-wife, allowing her to watch the rumored affair unfold in real time.

“I’m so in love with you,” Bentley wrote to Mason in one text, along with two heart-eye emojis. “We are pitiful.”

“Poor Robert. Poor Rebekah,” he added.

“Yes… Bless our hearts… And other parts,” Mason wrote back.

“Magnetic,” Bentley replied.

The device oversight was only one of Bentley's errors.

In spring 2014, he mistakenly sent a text to his wife reading, “I love you Rebekah,” along with an emoji of a red rose.

Dianne Bentley’s chief of staff, Heather Hannah, helped her boss secretly record phone calls in which the governor talked about his love for Mason and how he liked to come up behind her and fondle her breasts, according to the report. Once the governor learned that these recordings existed, he came to suspect Hannah’s involvement, and the report alleges he threatened her at the governor’s mansion on several occasions.

According to Hannah, Robert Bentley approached her in the spring of 2014 in the building’s kitchen, pointed his finger in her face, and warned, “You will never work in the State of Alabama again if you tell anyone about this.”

This deeply stupid man was running a state.
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Well if this goes anything like South Carolina he'll just come back in a few years as a Congressman.

whitewimmin posted...

“Yes… Bless our hearts… And other parts,”

Scandal aside, I'm using this cheesy line in the near future
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philsov posted...

Scandal aside, I'm using this cheesy line in the near future

I can't imagine any woman being able to keep her panties on after that
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whitewimmin posted...

In spring 2014, he mistakenly sent a text to his wife reading, "I love you Rebekah," along with an emoji of a red rose.

lmao
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Family Values
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