State senator reports possible grounds for Governor Mark Sanford’s impeachment and removal from office
Sanford faces possible call for impeachment & removal from office
Governor Mark Sanford faced a possible call on Monday for his impeachment and removal from office on grounds of abusing state finances.
South Carolina State Senator David Thomas (pictured left), a 20-year veteran of the state senate who represents the Greenville area, made the call in a letter to members of the constitutional/administrative subcommittee of the South Carolina Senate finance committee. Thomas is chairman of that subcommittee, whose other members are John Land III from Manning and Greg Ryburg from Aiken. The finance committee is chaired by Hugh Leatherman, one of the state’s most powerful senate members.
Thomas’s letter accuses Sanford of violating state regulations by taking state-sponsored trips to London, England, and China in 2006 and 2007 at a cost approximately $13,700 more than allowed by law. State travel is required to be at the lowest available rate unless an emergency is involved. Thomas claims that Sanford’s trips did not involve emergencies and that lower rates to the tune of $13,700 were available.
State legislators have been looking for ways to remove Sanford from office since revelations of his affair with a woman in Argentina emerged in late June after he disappeared for almost a week to go see her in Buenos Aires. Thomas’s report for Sanford’s possible impeachment and removal from office is a racheting up of the pressure on Sanford, who has already faced calls for his resignation from a number of influential state senators.
According to Wikipedia:
“From June 18 until June 24, 2009, the whereabouts of Governor Sanford were unknown to the public, including to his wife and the State Law Enforcement Division, which provides security for him, garnering nationwide news coverage. Lieutenant Governor André Bauer announced that he could not ‘take lightly that his staff has not had communication with him for more than four days, and that no one, including his own family, knows his whereabouts.’
“Before his disappearance, Governor Sanford told his staff that he would be hiking on the Appalachian Trail and while he was gone he did not answer 15 cell phone calls from his chief of staff Scott English; he also failed to call his family on Father’s Day.
“Several hours after a reporter intercepted Governor Sanford arriving at an airport in a neighboring state [Atlanta] after flying back from Argentina, and upon learning that incriminating evidence was being swiftly mobilized against him by the press, Sanford held a conference, during which he admitted that he had been unfaithful to his wife.
“In emotional interviews with the AP over two days, Mark Sanford said he would die ‘knowing that I had met my soul mate.’ Sanford also said that he ‘crossed the lines’ with a handful of other women during 20 years of marriage, but not as far as he did with his mistress. ‘There were a handful of instances wherein I crossed the lines I shouldn’t have crossed as a married man, but never crossed the ultimate line,’ he said.
“On June 25, La Nación, a Buenos Aires newspaper, identified the Argentine woman as María Belén Chapur, a 43-year-old divorced mother of two with a university degree in international affairs who lives in the upscale district of Palermo and works as a commodity broker for the international agricultural firm, Bunge y Born. The State [a newspaper in Columbia SC] earlier had published details of e-mails between Sanford and a woman only identified as ‘Maria’. Sanford met Chapur at a dance in Uruguay in 2001 and admitted having sex with her starting in 2008.
“Sanford’s wife had become aware of her husband’s infidelities around five months before the scandal broke, and the two had sought marriage counseling. She said that she had requested a trial separation about two weeks before his disappearance.
“After his affair was revealed in June 2009, Sanford first claimed, ‘There’s been a lot of speculation and innuendo on whether or not public moneys were used to advance my admitted unfaithfulness. To be very clear: no public money was ever used in connection with this.’ After a reporter used the Freedom of Information Act to seek records of what public funds were used to pay for Sanford’s trip to Argentina, Sanford eventually chose to reimburse taxpayers for expenses he had incurred one year earlier with his mistress in Argentina. He said, ‘I made a mistake while I was there in meeting with the woman who I was unfaithful to my wife with. That has raised some very legitimate concerns and questions, and as such I am going to reimburse the state for the full cost of the Argentina leg of this trip.’ “
Related posts:
- Senator Tom Davis signals upcoming decision against Mark Sanford
- Views on Mark Sanford tell the story of his trials, tribulations and survival as governor
- Full text of State Senator Tom Davis’s “Dear Friend” e-mail
- Editorial comment: Mark Sanford has lost his marriage and South Carolinians have lost their faith in their governor
- Editorial comment: Mark Sanford has lost his marriage and South Carolinians have lost their faith in their governor
