Top 10 Political Sex Scandals
South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford has gotten off easy compared to his philandering political predecessors. TIME looks back at the tawdry affairs that brought down the high and mighty
Scandal: Lying about an affair with a city official
How Outed: Text messages
An investigation by the Detroit Free Press turned up a lengthy series of text messages between Detroit Mayor Kilpatrick and city official Christine Beatty exposing a romantic relationship between the two that they both denied in court while testifying in a city lawsuit. Both were married at the time of the affair. In September 2008, Kilpatrick pleaded guilty to two counts of obstruction of justice and agreed to serve four months in jail. Announcing his resignation, Kilpatrick remained defiant, proclaiming, "I want to tell you, Detroit, that you done set me up for a comeback." Kilpatrick was released in Feb. 2009, just weeks before Wayne County Clerk's Office released — uncensored — the roughly 1,400 text messages that Kilpatrick and Beatty exchanged via city-issued pagers.
Read "Texts, Lies and the Mayor of Detroit."
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