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In-Depth Interview: Journalist Roger Shuler is Vindicated, But Pays Steep Price

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Intrepid blogger Roger Shuler broke the story about Alabama Gov. Bentley’s affair just 10 days before Missouri deputies broke Carol Shuler’s arm…is there a connection?As MSNBC and Alabama media confirm Roger Shuler’s reporting on the affair between Gov. Robert Bentley (R-AL) and a top staffer, Rebekah Caldwell Mason, we also learn that Bentley ordered his law enforcement agencies to use federal resources to find dirt on Shuler and another online reporter, Donald Watkins.

We begin with a recap of Bentley’s antics, and how his former wife of 50 years, Diane Bentley, released an audio recording of his side of a phone conversation with Mason that is quite intimate, and belies the awkward public denials by Bentley and Mason that they never had a “physical affair”.

A week ago, Bentley abruptly fired his secretary of law enforcement, Spencer Collier, who went public with his refusal to cover up for his boss and said he had told Bentley that his actions may have broken the law.

We laugh at the pledge from Alabama’s attorney general–Luther Strange, who was outed by Shuler for his own adultery–to conduct a thorough investigation.

When we turn to the revelations that Shuler was targeted for retaliation, the laughing stops.  At this point we can only speculate, but 10 days after Shuler posted the news about the Bentley affair, he and his wife were forcibly evicted from an apartment in Springfield, MO.  The Sheriff personally presided over this routine matter, and did not interfere when a deputy who had told Carol she could go back into the apartment instead assaulted her, inflicting severe fractures on one of her arms.  Will the investigations produce evidence that the brutal eviction was part of the payback from Bentley?

You can read all of Shuler’s reporting, and make a contribution, here.  The article with the timeline of Bentley’s second term is here.