An Oklahoma county commissioner who was secretly recorded talking about killing reporters and lynching black residents after a public meeting has reportedly resigned, according to the governor’s office.
McCurtain County Commissioner Mark Jennings delivered a handwritten resignation letter to Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, two days after the governor called for his resignation and the resignations of Sheriff Kevin Clardy and two other county department employees. sheriff, a spokesman for Stitt confirmed.
“Effective immediately, I, Mark Jennings, hereby resign as Commissioner of McCurtain County District #2,” Jennings wrote on a white-ruled pad of paper. «I will be releasing a formal statement in the near future regarding recent events in our county.»
Meanwhile, the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation has launched an investigation into the matter at Stitt’s request, agency spokesman Gerald Davidson said Wednesday.
Following Jennings’s resignation, the state Senator George BurnsR-Pollard, who lives in McCurtain County, said in a statement that after hearing the recordings, he urged the commissioner and Clardy to «resign immediately.»
“When the words of public servants are so vile that they hurt the people they serve, they should no longer be in those positions,” Burns said.
It was reportedly Jennings who spoke about the lynching on a March 6 recording made by McCurtain County Gazette-News reporter Bruce Willingham, according to the newspaper.
When the conversation turned to who could run for sheriff against Clardy, Jennings seemed to remember how an ex-sheriff would «take a motherfucking black and kick his ass and throw him in the cell.»
«Yes,» Clardy appears to have responded, according to the newspaper’s recording account. «It’s not like that».
«I know,» Jennings reportedly said. Take them to Mud Creek and hang them with a fucking rope. But you can’t do that anymore. They have more rights than us.»
Jennings, 59, could not immediately be reached for comment. He appears to have turned off his cell phone and has not responded to emails.
Clardy and the other two sheriff’s department workers, investigator Alicia Manning and jail administrator Larry Hendrix, also have not responded to repeated requests for interviews since the McCurtain County Gazette-News story about the secret recording broke. light on the weekend.
Neither has spoken publicly about the scandal engulfing the county. On Monday, the sheriff’s office claimed the recording had been «illegally obtained» and appeared to have been altered and may have violated a state law that prohibits secret recordings by third parties.
Christin Jones of the Kilpatrick Townsend law firm, which represents the paper, insisted the recording had not been tampered with and that Willingham, whose family has owned the paper for 40 years, did not break the law in making it.
“This is an accurate recording and does not violate the Oklahoma Communications Security Law,” Jones said by email. «The full audio is planned to be released on Thursday.»
The entire recording has already been released to the FBI and the Oklahoma attorney general’s office, the law firm said.
The Oklahoma Sheriffs Association suspended Clardy, Manning and Hendrix from the organization Tuesday. The measure does not remove them from their jobs in the sheriff’s department.