Is there ever a better story than sex and politics?
Florida Lt. Gov. Jennifer Carroll is at the center of an ongoing criminal case, where she is alleged to have had an improper relationship with a staffer who happens to be female, along with an illegally taped conversation of the incident inside Carroll’s office.
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The allegations, which Carroll denies, were included in a court filing made late last week by the attorney representing Carletha Cole, who was arrested last October on charges that she gave an illegally taped conversation with another Carroll aide to a newspaper reporter.
As reported by the Miami Herald:
In the filing, Cole contends that she witnessed Carroll and a top aide, Beatriz Ramos, in a “compromising position” inside Carroll’s office, that Carroll’s chief of staff secretly recorded conversations routinely at the direction of those working for Gov. Rick Scott, and that the trash can at Cole’s desk might have been deliberately set ablaze following an argument between her and Ramos.
Cole also said Ramos was living at Carroll’s home and at one point she was ordered by Ramos to find adjoining hotel rooms for Carroll and Ramos when they traveled. Cole said that she was “scolded” by an agent with Carroll’s security team when she placed Ramos next door to Carroll when the lieutenant governor and her husband traveled last summer to Puerto Rico. The agent told her to not do it again, Cole says, although he did not explain why.
Carroll, a former Navy officer who is also a mother of three, says the allegations are all lies.
“That’s totally false and absurd,” said Carroll, a former Republican legislator who was chosen by Scott as his running mate in 2010.
Carroll said the allegations are an attempt by Cole and her attorney to get the criminal charges against Cole dropped. Cole is charged with a third-degree felony and could get up to five years in prison.
“They are trying to pull at straws,” Carroll said. “All this stuff you mentioned doesn’t excuse what happened.”
Stephen Webster, the Tallahassee attorney representing Cole, stood by the allegations included in the filing: “That’s the truth. It is what it is.”
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigation that resulted in Cole’s arrest began last September after the agency received a complaint that a secret audio recording had been made in Carroll’s office. The agency reported its findings to prosecutor Willie Meggs, the state attorney for the Tallahassee area.
It is against Florida law to record someone without consent, but there have been legal questions about recordings made in public buildings.
In her court filing, Cole states that she went to Carroll’s office door, which was closed. She says she walked in and found Carroll and Ramos “in what can only be described as a compromising position.” Carroll denies this ever happened.
Cole was fired about the time the investigation began after publicly speaking out about infighting in Carroll’s office.
Another sex scandal is set to rock the political world. Stay tuned…
SOURCE: Miami Herald
