It was never physical.

That was what Robert Bentley, a two-term Republican who was governor of Alabama until earlier this week, insisted about his relationship with Rebekah Caldwell Mason, a former TV news reporter and married mother of three who had worked for Bentley since his first gubernatorial campaign.

But then, well, the truth came out and all hell broke loose.

According to Vox, suspicions about Bentley’s possible affair arose back in 2015 when his wife filed for divorce.

Where there’s smoke, there’s fire, and so local Alabama reporters went hard at the rumours that Bentley [below] was a cheater.

Finding out information wasn’t difficult, though, as others knew, too:

Inside the state government, though, at least some people had been aware of a scandal for some time. Back in August 2014, Stan Stabler of the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency saw a text message from Mason on Bentley’s cellphone. Stabler notified his then-boss, Ray Lewis, of the sexual nature of the text message, and three days later, Lewis went to Paul Collier, then the head of the state law enforcement agency, with the information.

Here’s an example of the texts – you can see the rest here.

Fast forward three years later, and it is considered the state’s biggest scandal, resulting in Bentley stepping down after “a 3 000-page report on Friday from the Alabama House judiciary committee attorney said Mr Bentley had demanded state officials help him cover up an “inappropriate relationship”, reports BBC.

You see, the scandal goes beyond sex and includes “abuses of power Bentley allegedly committed in order to cover up his infidelity”:

He had also “encouraged an atmosphere of intimidation” to hide the scandal, according to the findings.

The report concluded that Bentley “directed law enforcement to advance his personal interests and, in a process characterised by increasing obsession and paranoia, subjected career law enforcement officers to tasks intended to protect his reputation”.

Here’s the story:

Bentley’s wife had longstanding suspicions of an affair between Bentley and Mason, and collaborated with her chief of staff, Heather Hannah, to secretly record Bentley and Mason on the phone. Her goal was to puncture the web of denial around Bentley personally and force him to acknowledge the truth to his family. But as the impeachment report states, “Governor Bentley became obsessed with the existence of the tapes and a desire to prevent them from becoming public.”

This led to efforts to intimidate Hannah (she says he told her, “You will never work in the State of Alabama again if you tell anyone about this,” and, on a later occasion, that she ought to “watch herself”) into silence.

Bentley also used Wendell Ray Lewis, chief of the state’s Dignitary Protection Unit, to try to help him cover up the affair, asking Lewis to chastise women staffers in the governor’s office for gossiping about it, directing him to break up with Mason on his behalf, ordering him to travel to Tuscaloosa to convince Bentley’s son to turn over the tapes, and then marginalizing Lewis after he attempted to intervene to block the use of state resources to further the affair and the cover-up.

Bentley also ordered Collier, the state’s chief law enforcement officer, “to research criminal law and to be prepared to arrest Heather Hannah” as well as “to travel to Greenville to question Director of Scheduling Linda Adams about whether she knew about the recordings.”

My personal favourite here from TPM:

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.

If ever there was a case of an old fart not understanding technology…

In the end, Bentley pleaded guilty in exchange for not being prosecuted for any felonies, taking a plea deal to face ‘two misdemeanour charges of campaign finance violations linked to the alleged affair,” explains BBC.

And so, on Monday, Robert Bentley had his mugshot taken and will never be allowed to step foot into a government position again.

The things we do for love.

[sources:bbc&vox&tpm]