Leading Off:
●AL-Gov: You might remember that back in September of last year, there were allegations that Republican Gov. Robert Bentley had engaged in an affair after First Lady Dianne Bentley filed for divorce after 50 years of marriage. Bentley denied the accusations and nothing tangible showed up, but there was a push for an investigation into whether Bentley had used state funds to cover up the alleged affair. However, that investigation never surfaced, and the news soon disappeared from the headlines.
Well, that story has burst back into the media's attention again, and this time there's more evidence, in the form of audio recordings of Bentley and his former spokesperson engaging in some rather, um, explicit conversation. Bentley is now allowing that the recordings are legitimate, but at a Wednesday press conference, he still denied that anything "physical" happened. The press conference came after Bentley fired the state's former law enforcement chief, Spencer Collier, who then came forward to tell the press that Bentley had an affair.
Collier alleges that Bentley leased a state plane to cover things up, and says that Bentley "asked him to lie in a separate, unrelated investigation." Bentley, for his part, says he has no plans to step down; he's halfway through his second term and can't run for re-election, so he may think he can just ignore the story and spend the next two years trying to change the subject. But it looks like things will get a lot worse for Bentley before they get better, and he may eventually decide that a weak governorship isn't a prize worth fighting for. If Bentley does resign at some point, Republican Lt. Gov. Kay Ivey would succeed him.