Alabama lawmakers meeting Tuesday, Wednesday on Robert Bentley impeachment
Alabama lawmakers from both chambers are scheduled to meet this week to discuss the ongoing impeachment investigation of Gov. Robert Bentley. On Tuesday, the Alabama House Judiciary Committee has scheduled a 10:00 a.m. morning meeting to discuss the procedural aspects of the investigation — the first hearing on the issue since September. Committee spokesman Clay Redden declined to comment on further specifics. On Wednesday, the committee’s Senate counterpart is holding a meeting in one of its subcommittees explore the use of subpoena power and as well as what rules are in place to guide a potential impeachment of the embattled Governor. Bentley, 73, last spring admitted making inappropriate remarks to his senior political adviser but denied accusations of an affair with her and of interfering in law enforcement business, accusations both raised by his fired law enforcement secretary. Following the news, twenty-three representatives signed articles of impeachment in April 2016, accusing Bentley of willful neglect of duty and corruption in office. The legislative probe officially began in June 2016, but it has been off to a slow start, as lawmakers find their way through an impeachment process that has not used in a century. In November, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee suspended impeachment hearings per the state’s attorney general’s office, as they are conducting a related investigation. Andalusia-Republican and House Judiciary Committee Chairman state Rep. Mike Jones has since stated he intends to the resume hearings pending approval from the new AG’s office. Jones said he expects to wrap up the investigation during the current legislation sessions, which ends in May.
Robert Bentley impeachment hearings suspended for investigation by AG Luther Strange
The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee has suspended hearings into the Articles of Impeachment filed against Governor Robert Bentley because the attorney general’s office is conducting a related investigation. Andalusia-Republican state Rep. Mike Jones on Wednesday said the committee decided to put the proceedings on hold at the request of Attorney General Luther Strange. “As I said at the first meeting on the Articles of Impeachment, this committee would work cooperatively with other investigating agencies and today’s action testifies to that,” said Jones in a news release. “We are temporarily suspending activity at the attorney general’s request but we are not abdicating our responsibility. Everything the committee has done remains in effect.” In a letter to Jones on Thursday, Strange said it would be “prudent and beneficial” to delay the work of the committee. “I respectfully request that the Committee cease active interviews and investigation until I am able to report to you that the necessary related work of my office has been completed,” wrote Strange. Speaker of the House, Monrovia-Republican Mac McCutcheon says he supports the committee’s decision. “While I have complete confidence in the Judiciary Committee and its special counsel, I believe that moving forward with the impeachment hearings while there is an active criminal investigation would put a number of parties in a difficult position,” McCutcheon said in a news release. “I support pausing the committee investigation and allowing the criminal proceedings to run their course.” Bentley released his own statement in response to the letter from Strange and the decision to suspend the impeachment proceedings. “I respect the position of the Attorney General and the leadership of the House of Representatives. My focus will continue to be on doing the work of the people of Alabama,” said Bentley. The decision to suspend the proceedings comes just days before the committee was scheduled to set a date to take testimony and evidence. The House Judiciary Committee began Bentley’s impeachment hearings in June.
Robert Bentley scandal making national headlines amid new revelations
Gov. Robert Bentley has already dominated news in Alabama, where during the spring details of his alleged affair with former adviser and staffer Rebekah Mason and the ongoing impeachment proceedings surrounding it seemed to dominate the news cycle. But now the governor’s press problem has gotten worse still, as GQ writer Jason Zengerle published a scathing article on the matter, bringing national attention to Bentley’s peccadilloes. The story begins with the story of how former First Lady Dianne Bentley surreptitiously recorded her husband at their beach house in Gulf Shores, capturing illicit and somewhat awkward chatter between Bentley and his extramarital partner Mason, and it doesn’t ease up from there. Reads one knife-twisting passage: At first, the governor made idle chitchat, but the conversation soon grew intimate, slipping as it did into the cringe-patois of a randy senior citizen. “I love you,” he told the person on the other end. “When I stand behind you and I put my arms around you, and I put my hands on your breasts, and I put my hands on you and pull you in real close, hey, I love that, too.” Robert went on in this vein for nearly 30 minutes. All the while, Dianne’s iPhone quietly recorded—filling itself with lusty incriminations that eventually would tornado through Alabama and spiral into the craziest political scandal in the country. “Rebekah, I just, I miss you,” he said wistfully at one point. “I worry about loving you so much.” The article, while it focuses on salacious revelations like the above, also puts Bentley in his Alabamian context. “Every governor exists in a perpetually reinforcing bubble of self-regard. But in Alabama, delusions of grandeur can inflate to Mobutu-like proportions,” Zengerle writes. The article also regales readers with the tale of Mason’s ascension within the Bentley administration. After nearly three years on the periphery of the governor’s inner circle, Mason made her move for greater influence in late 2013. According to a person close to her at that time, she thought the governor was being ill-served by his other advisers. Bentley’s approval numbers were high, but Mason, who had recently begun working for his re-election campaign, believed that he’d squandered his first term and that he needed to be more aggressive. Before long, she was functioning as Bentley’s top adviser. “He didn’t have a voice,” one friend of Mason’s told me, “until she helped him find it.” And then, as we all are familiar with by now, things took another turn. … Bentley—an awkward man with a heart-rending comb-over who’d married young and come late to his lofty position—was unaccustomed to female attention. And foolishly susceptible to it. When his advisers would caution him about pushing for things the legislature wouldn’t support, like a teacher pay raise, Mason would counter in a syrupy voice, “But you’re the governor. People love you.” Of course, it’s impossible to know when Bentley and Mason’s relationship became more than just professional. (Neither Bentley nor Mason responded to GQ’s interview requests. Bentley has apologized for making “inappropriate remarks” to Mason, and both have denied having a “physical affair.”) But their closeness had become noticeable and, to those around the governor, increasingly troubling. Beyond a vivid recounting of the Bentley affair, so to speak, the article also contains new revelations that are of note to Alabama pol watchers. For instance, this hot take from a former Bentley loyalist: “When she became his top political adviser, it was like the Hindenburg came down and fell on the Titanic as the Titanic hit the iceberg. I was watching a woman who didn’t know how a bill becomes a law running the state of Alabama.” To boot, the story revealed new details about Bentley’s fondness for the iPhone’s red rose emoji, financial difficulties in Mason’s family life that more or less led to her appointment with the Bentley administration in the first place, and drama over Bentley’s wife and children, who nearly boycotted the governor’s second inauguration and, cruelly, ended up seated just behind Mason’s family. Read the full piece here.
Robert Bentley’s campaign seeks to dismiss Spencer Collier lawsuit
Alabama Governor Robert Bentley‘s campaign attorneys are seeking to dismiss a lawsuit filed by former Alabama Law Enforcement Agency chief Spencer Collier in the aftermath of the latter’s termination. The governor’s lawyers argued in a motion filed Monday morning that the lawsuit’s allegations are too “vague” and “ambiguous.” Spencer Collier, who accused Bentley of having an affair with former senior advisor Rebekah Mason the day after he was fired, said in the lawsuit that Bentley and Mason made misleading statements to the media in an effort to discredit him. “Their lies have hurt me financially, have severely damaged my reputation and they have made it their mission to permanently end my career in law enforcement,” Collier said in a statement regarding the lawsuit. The lawsuit named four other defendants besides the Bentley campaign (Bentley for Governor, Inc.) Gov. Bentley himself, new ALEA Secretary Stan Stabler, Rebekah Mason, and the group through which she was paid, the Alabama Council for Excellent Government. The two-page filing is the only response to the lawsuit thus far submitted by any of its defendants. “The only basis of the complaint against this defendant appears to be the allegations that defendant Mason is an agent or servant of this defendant,” Bentley for Governor, Inc.’s lawyers wrote in the two-page document. “Said allegations in this regard are insufficient and not in accordance with the Alabama Rules of Civil Procedure. “The complaint is so general, vague and/or ambiguous that Defendant cannot reasonably frame or file a responsive motion and/or pleading. Plaintiff has failed to provide sufficient factual descriptions of the alleged actions by this Defendant.” The lawsuit and Monday’s motion were filed in Montgomery Circuit Court. The governor has maintained his own innocence throughout the months following Collier’s allegations. Efforts to impeach Bentley have thus far fallen short, facing opposition in the Alabama Legislature.
