Florida lieutentant governor Jennifer Carroll's accuser wants FBI probe of trash can fire
theGRIO REPORT - Lawyers for a woman who accused Florida Lieutenant Governor Jennifer Carroll of carrying on an affair with a female aide is calling on the FBI to investigate a trashcan fire in her office...
About a month later, Colw was charged with disseminating an illegally recorded conversation between herself and John Konkus, Carroll’s chief of staff. The approximately 1-minute conversation involved Konkus criticizing Gov. Scott’s former chief of staff, Steve MacNamara, and the governor himself for “not leading,” and for appearing to be afraid of Carroll. At issue: Carroll’s desire for her own website, separate from the governor’s, which Cole and Konkus were concerned was not being approved through the right channels. Cole gave the recording to a Florida Times-Union newspaper reporter after she was fired last September.
Webster says Cole did not make the recording, and that the governor’s office issued a directive that all meetings in the lieutenant governor’s office be “covertly recorded,” along with all media interviews, so that if the resulting story appeared to contradict the governor’s or his staff recollection, they would have their own tapes for review. The allegation points to apparent distrust between the governor’s and lieutenant governor’s office, and a dysfunctional relationship between their staffs.
Cole has claimed that Konkus routinely boasted about having a “smart pen” that could record conversations without anyone knowing, implying that Konkus was the person most likely to have made the recording. Prosecutors disagree, and the state attorney in the case indicated Tuesday that he may also charge Cole with making the recording, after she turned down a plea deal, and in the words of State Attorney Willie Meggs, “went to war” with Carroll.
Cole’s attorney turned to the FBI after her requests to have state law enforcement re-open the fire investigation were denied.
If convicted of disseminating an illegal recording, the grandmother and AME pastor — who passed a lie detector regarding her allegations of a sexual tryst inside the lieutenant governor’s office — faces five years in prison. Lie detector test results are inadmissible in court in Florida.
Carroll’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment. The governor did discuss the case with reporters over the weekend, however, telling television reporters outside a grand opening for a Mitt Romney for President office in Florida, that the allegations of a lesbian liaison with her aide are impossible, because “black women who look like” her “don’t engage in those kinds of relationships.”
Carroll was one of 22 black Republican “VIPs” who traveled with Romney to Houston when he addressed the NAACP.
Follow Joy Reid on Twitter at @thereidreport
