Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and his chief of staff lied about their relationship last summer at a police whistle-blower trial that has cost the cash-strapped city more than $9 million, according to records.
The false testimony potentially exposes them to felony perjury charges, legal experts say.
Kilpatrick and chief of staff Christine Beatty denied during testimony in August that they had a sexual relationship. But the records, a series of text messages, show them engaged in romantic banter as well as planning and recounting sexual liaisons.
The messages are also at odds with the pair's trial testimony that they did not fire Deputy Police Chief Gary Brown in 2003, an ouster that led him to sue. The text messages show Beatty recalling the "decision that we made to fire Gary Brown."
The newspaper examined nearly 14,000 text messages on Beatty's city-issued pager. The exchanges, which the Free Press obtained after the trial, cover two months each in 2002 and 2003.
