According to published reports, Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and his former chief of staff Christine Beatty continue to deny an intimate relationship as more damaging text messages between the two are released to the public.  Many of the emails sent in 2002 and 2003 allegedly provide further evidence that the two discussed their intimate relationship, possible marriage and the forced ouster of a police officer investigating the pair. In a September 2002 message, Beatty wrote, "I have wanted to hold you so badly all day, but I was trying to stay focused on work. So, I promise, not to keep you longer than 15 minutes."  On April 8, 2003, she wrote, "You told me that you would be my boyfriend every day until I was your wife." In another message later that month she calls Kilpatrick an "amazing man" and writes that "everything about you makes me love you."

The text messages were obtained by a lawyer working with a group of whistleblowers who sued the city.  The city settled the whistleblowers' claims.  Most cell phone companies, in the absence of a court order to the contrary, keep text-message data for a number of days or weeks.  However, Kilpatrick was reportedly tripped up because he used a government-issued pager which featured a message archiving system.