Christine Beatty
Life took a big turn down trouble lane quite a while ago for Kwame Kilpatrick and his ex-lover Christine Beatty, who was also his chief of staff.
Kilpatrick is serving 28 years in prison. Beatty agreed to pay $100,000 in restitution in connection with the texting scandal that torpedoed hers and Kilpatrick's careers. She and Kilpatrick lied about their relationship in a civil trial.
Now, Robert Snell of The Detroit News reports that Beatty hasn’t made a restitution payment in a year to the city of Detroit and recently was hit with a $26,000 federal tax bill.
Questions arise about her ability to pay the remaining restitution of $78,484, Snell notes. The outstanding tax bill relates to debt dating back to 2008, the year she resigned as chief of staff.
Beatty, 44, has struggled to secure a full-time job or shake the Kilpatrick stigma after spending 69 days in jail, moving to Georgia, filing bankruptcy and penning a first-person story in Essence Magazine. In the essay, she said the former Detroit mayor “made me laugh, he made me angry, he propelled me to ecstasy and reduced me to tears.”
“Things are very difficult for her. I know she’s been in a tough situation and is doing what she can to rectify it,” her lawyer Jeffrey Morganroth told The Detroit News. “The association with the Kilpatrick administration, it just creates a cloud.”
-- Allan Lengel
