Mayor’s Amorous Texts Lead to Perjury Inquiry

New York Times:

"The city’s charismatic but scandal-plagued mayor and his chief of staff will be the subject of an investigation into whether they lied under oath when they denied having an extramarital affair, the Wayne County prosecutor announced here Friday.

The investigation by the prosecutor, Kym L. Worthy, was prompted by The Detroit Free Press’s publication this week of text messages, many of them flirtatious, between the mayor, Kwame M. Kilpatrick, and his chief of staff, Christine Beatty, who have known each other since high school.

The messages, transmitted to and from Ms. Beatty’s city-owned pager in 2002 and 2003, appear to show that the two had an intimate relationship and suggest that they committed perjury by denying the affair during testimony in one of two whistleblower lawsuits that have cost taxpayers in the beleaguered city more than $9 million."