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.
Your tax dollars at work, Kansas FReepers!
Paul Morrison/Phill Kline ping!
Our local paper Kansas City Star (Scar) former home town paper to Morrison, today issued exactly how many hours spent "chatting" during the hours of 8-5 and even stated that one day the time was slightly more than 3 hours!
And the same paper questioned the actual amount of hours logged in by his nemisis, Phill Kline as new JoCo DA!
They will never get over losing "their" guy and are attempting to sidetrack special prosecutor looking into the alleged crimes, claiming that Morrison's agreeing to step down January 31 is "punishment enough."
If you could add me to that ping list I’d appreciate it.
Not the "Wonder Woman" Linda Carter?
A very long time ago, when I was a newly minted lawyer/persecutor in a coastal DA’s office, I was told that rule #1 was “Don’t dip your pen in the company ink!” It was then and still is good advice.
I've just figured out why I didn't find it when I searched before posting: We each posted it under different parts of the same overlong headline.
Done.
I haven’t been following this prairie potboiler so feel free to correct me. It looks here like it was definitely a case of two playing tango and the party of the second part decided to end things when the party of the first part was of no further use to her.
I’m just wondering if Ms. Carter thinks blowing this up with a sexual harassment suit will somehow further her career in these double-standard times.
What did you post under, sometimes I have a problem with deciding where to actually list a post?
I usually post a story with the just the main headline, although I will sometimes include the subheadline if it will fit.
Thanks and may Morrison taint the Governor as well.
That may well be true, but I'm reserving judgment until more details about the affair and especially about the breakup surface. That said, I'm leaning toward the theory that the sexual harrassment allegations stem from Morrison's behavior after Carter broke off the affair. I get the impression he didn't take the rejection well at all, and got obsessive and unhinged.
Carter filed an EEOC complaint, which, along with Morrison's response, is almost certainly chock full of juicy details, but the documents in that case are not public. So we have to wait.
There's a bit more to it than that.
Carter has also alleged that, through her, Morrison tried to sabotage pending investigations and prosecutions of his cronies.
Linda Carter, alleged Morrison asked her to spy on her current boss, Johnson County District Attorney Phill Kline, and provide Morrison with inside info on Kline’s investigation of Planned Parenthood for illegal late-term and underage abortions.
OMG you have the CUTEST grandchild. How blessed you are. Is she a Kansan as well?
Sadly they are all in Virginia. The son-in-law has a farm there.
With the exception of the Ten Commandments, which no longer apply in the Baby-Butcher State.
A local TV station ran an ‘espose’ on Kline allegedly showing how few hours he put in at the office. Morrison may have spent more hours at work but it appears that most of it was on the phone with his bimbo. It must have been an interesting Christmas at the Morrison household.
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