Posted on 12/29/2007 3:13:01 PM PST by Huntress
Attorney General Paul Morrison and mistress Linda Carter kept in close touch during their extramarital affair, leaving a trail of evidence pinpointing when their long-distance romance came to a bitter end.
Documents obtained Thursday from the offices of the attorney general and the Johnson County district attorney under the Kansas Open Records Act show Morrison placed at least 480 telephone calls this year from his personal and work telephones to numbers assigned to Carter. At the time, he was serving as the state's top law enforcement officer in Topeka and she was director of administration in the Johnson County district attorney's office in Olathe.
The covert lovers spoke for more than 10,700 minutes in the first 10 months of this year — lighting up the switchboard until their relationship hit a brick wall in October. That averages about 35 minutes a day on the phone.
In November, Carter filed a federal sexual harassment complaint against Morrison and quit her job.
The Topeka-Capital Journal first reported their two-year relationship Dec. 9, and Morrison announced five days later his intention to resign at the end of January.
The telephone records are potentially significant because Johnson County District Attorney Phill Kline is pressing a criminal investigation of Morrison's involvement in telephone harassment, blackmail and unspecified other crimes alleged to have occurred amid the Carter-Morrison affair.
Kline wasn't available for comment Thursday, but the district attorney has said "sufficient evidence to warrant" the investigation had been obtained.
Morrison confirmed he had a sexual relationship with Carter, who was his subordinate in the district attorney's office. However, Morrison rejects assertions he violated any law or code of ethics. He affirmed that position Thursday in a statement issued by his spokeswoman.
"Any allegations that I violated the laws of this state or the ethical standards of my profession are absolutely false," Morrison said.
Telephone records obtained by The Capital-Journal provide support to claims made by Carter that Morrison called her repeatedly around noon Oct. 31 threatening to "destroy" her effort to obtain employment if she wouldn't talk to him about their relationship. In a portion of one of those calls overheard by witnesses, Carter said Morrison told her she was a "monster, (expletive) sociopath liar."
Records also confirm the Johnson County cellular telephone number assigned to Carter was dialed five times back-to-back at 4 a.m. Sept. 29 from someone using the phone at Morrison's residence in Lenexa. Carter said she spoke to Morrison that night and he explained that his wife, Joyce, was out of town and it was fine to talk. Carter said she had told Morrison the previous day that she no longer wanted a relationship with him.
"I want you out of my life," she recalled saying in a signed statement.
Half of the telephone calls linking Morrison and Carter in 2007 occurred from July to October, seeming to undercut Morrison's public statement in early December that he had been "working for the past year to repair the damage this relationship (with Carter) caused to others."
From July 11 to Oct. 10, the span of three monthly billing cycles, Morrison called Carter at least 124 times and they talked for more than 5,500 minutes. A significant portion of these conversations took place from July 11 to Aug. 10, including 61 calls that consumed an astonishing 4,000 minutes. That is a daily average of two hours on the phone with each other.
In Morrison's first month as attorney general, he called Carter more than 100 times. Approximately one-third of those calls were placed during the hours of 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on a weekday.
Although they had sex after he was sworn in, the last time Carter said she last had sex with Morrison inside the Johnson County Courthouse in Olathe was on Jan. 7, the day before he became attorney general. Their affair had started in 2005 with a sexual liaison in the county building in downtown Olathe.
Morrison reached Carter by telephone twice on the day he swore the oath of office at the Statehouse, according to the telephone records. Carter and Morrison spoke for 20 minutes during a call initiated by Morrison at 7:22 a.m. from a cell phone. By the time Morrison and Carter spoke by telephone again, at 11:49 p.m., he had traded his title as Johnson County district attorney for Kansas attorney general.
These records don't represent a complete summary of communication between Morrison and Carter. Only calls on phones tied to a publicly funded agency, such as the attorney general's office or the Johnson County government, are within reach of the state's open records act.
Morrison switched to the Democratic Party to oppose Kline, the GOP incumbent attorney general, during the general election in 2006. He easily defeated Kline following a contentious campaign.
While Morrison replaced Kline in the attorney general's office, Kline was appointed by members of the Republican Party in Johnson County to complete the remainder of Morrison's term as district attorney.
Kline intends to select the special prosecutor after Jan. 1 to look into evidence Morrison might have violated state law in the conduct of his relationship with Carter. She alleges, in part, Morrison attempted to obtain from her confidential information and to influence litigation involving Kline's district attorney office.
Morrison said more than once he had never "done anything contrary to the laws of this state."
In addition to the criminal inquiry, the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has Carter's sexual harassment complaint. The state's panel for the discipline of attorneys is reviewing Morrison's conduct for ethical infractions.
Tim Carpenter can be reached at (785) 296-3005 or timothy.carpenter@cjonline.com.
The producer of that segment is no longer with the TV station... There was a police report filed against a reporter of the station for harassment: A woman who lived in the same apartment complex was repeatedly followed to work and home by an "undercover reporter," and she thought that she was being stalked. BTW, this is the same station that hooked up with a group that goes around suing police departments for "police brutality," and the station and the guy trying to stage the "arrest" were busted big time, but I don't know what ever happened to that case.
Mark
The Dems and RINOs little ‘golden boy’ shows his true colors. Ah, but they’ll defend him until the cows come home, because he’s pro-choice.
Did you notice they did not take into account the amount of time spent in court, interviewing witnesses, et al? They only worried about his hours actually in the office.
No, actually I didn't watch it. I figured KCTV, it was going to be sensationalist junk anyway and not worth the time.
Phill's getting ready for life after politics, so it's not surprising he isn't around the office a lot. Before Morrison stepped in it, the expectation was that Phill would be resigning soon, perhaps as early as this month so his replacement would have time to build a record and run as an incumbant. Kobach would like to win the office back in November, he needs to show some sort of victory to build his record in preparation for his senate run. But with the Morrison scandal I've no doubt that now Phill will stay and try and see it through. The worse it gets for Morrison the better it'll be for the Republican candidate, whoever he is.
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