Scandal: Lying about an affair with a city official
How he was outed: Text messages
An investigation by the Detroit Free Press turned up a lengthy series of text messages between then Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and city official Christine Beatty, exposing a romantic relationship that they both denied in court while testifying in a city lawsuit. Both were married at the time of the affair. In September 2008, Kilpatrick pleaded guilty to two counts of obstruction of justice and agreed to serve four months in jail. Announcing his resignation, Kilpatrick remained defiant, proclaiming, "I want to tell you, Detroit, that you done set me up for a comeback." Kilpatrick was released in Febraury 2009, just weeks before the Wayne County Clerk's Office released — uncensored — the roughly 1,400 text messages that Kilpatrick and Beatty exchanged via city-issued pagers.