Ky. candidate: Accuser offered money for allegations

Scroll to the bottom of this story to listen to both candidates' discussions with the Enquirer editorial board. This story previously had a poll asking who you believed. After a strong community reaction, that poll was removed.

Kentucky Republican gubernatorial candidate James Comer said Tuesday that the woman who has accused him of physically and mentally abusing her in college was probably offered money to come forward, and implied in an interview that his GOP rival Hal Heiner or his backers could be behind it.

"We have a great deal of confidence that people involved in this have been offered money by the Heiner campaign," Comer, the state's sitting agriculture commissioner, said during a meeting with the Enquirer's editorial board. "Do I think that Hal Heiner himself knew about it or did it? I want to hope not.

"But you have to be able to control your campaign and control and weed out corruption. If you can't do it in your campaign, how can you do it once you get to Frankfort? This is the dirtiest move in the dirtiest campaign for governor in the history of the state."

Heiner, in a separate interview Tuesday with the Enquirer editorial board, denied his campaign was responsible for spreading news about the alleged abuse and abortion.

On Monday, the Louisville Courier-Journal reported that Marilyn Thomas, whom Comer said he dated for about four months, had accused Comer of physically and mentally abusing her while they were in college together at Western Kentucky University in the 1990s. Thomas also wrote in a letter to that newspaper that Comer helped her get an abortion while in school, and became enraged after she signed his name to an admittance form at the abortion clinic.

Tuesday, Comer flatly denied the allegations, and could offer no reason why Thomas would come forward less than two weeks before the Republican primary.

Comer and Heiner are joined by Louisville businessman Matt Bevin and former Kentucky Supreme Court Judge Will T. Scott from Pikeville on the May 19 ballot. The winner will square off against the presumed Democrat nominee Attorney General Jack Conway of Louisville in the general election.

Comer said that he was not able to offer proof of such a payoff. He said the campaign has retained legal counsel and was cooperating with a criminal investigation into Lexington blogger Michael Adams, who has been linked to the Heiner campaign through Heiner's running mate and who has been accusing Comer of such abuse online for more than a year.

Tuesday, Kenton County Commonwealth Attorney Rob Sanders confirmed a grand jury was looking into allegations that the blogger Adams threatened the children of Comer's running mate state Sen. Chris McDaniel, R-Taylor Mill, but declined to discuss how far that probe was progressing. Sanders also said that the Comer campaign had turned over "voluminous documentation" about the case.

Comer said that he included the political action committee known as Citizen's For Sound Government as part of Heiner's campaign. The PAC, backed by Republican activists the Koch brothers, has spent more than $2 million on negative advertising in the state, and Heiner's former campaign manager Joe Burgan is employed by the organization.

Thomas, a native of Morganfield, Ky., now resides in New York City. She denied being offered any money through the Heiner campaign and said she has never met Heiner when asked by the Courier-Journal late Tuesday.

She has, however, donated $100 to Heiner's campaign according to state records, and indicated she supports Heiner on social media.

In a Wednesday evening social media post, Thomas addressed the allegations that she was paid for the allegations, writing: "If I was going to make up a story, I would have used far less humiliating details. And nobody paid me anything. Period."

"Ask Jamie if he would consent to sitting in a room with me and taking a polygraph," she said in an electronic message to the Courier-Journal late Tuesday. The Enquirer and the Courier-Journal are both owned by Gannett.

In a separate interview with the Enquirer editorial board Tuesday, Heiner denied any involvement with the Thomas story and said that there was no coordination between the campaign and the PAC. He apologized to Comer last week for the fact that the husband of his running mate KC Crosbie had discussed the abuse allegations and how to spread them with Adams previously.

"I know the people who are in my campaign and I know that when I found out about the connection (between the Crosbies and Adams), I addressed it," Heiner said. "Whatever is happening is between James Comer and the young lady involved. We have had no involvement.

"There is no connection between the campaign and the committee, and no communication or coordination."

Later Tuesday, Heiner campaign spokesman Kyle Robertson pointed out that Comer had not issued any proof.

"After calling Ms. Thomas a good person last week, now Jamie Comer is questioning his accuser's mental health and completely lying about Hal Heiner," Robertson said in a statement. "Jamie Comer is desperate to save his failing campaign and willing to say anything to distract voters. His wild accusations are completely false and backed up only by the delusions of his own mind. He has not offered one shred of evidence."

Officials with the Denver-based Citizens for Sound Government also denied involvement with the Thomas accusations.

"To suggest that our organization would find an old girlfriend of James Comer, track her down in New York City, make contact with her, and pay her to invent a story about domestic abuse and abortion is the most outrageous, over-the-top whopper of an allegation that we have ever heard a politician put forward," PAC chairman Alan Philp said in an email to The Enquirer. "The claim is of course preposterous and untrue, and is the latest example of Mr. Comer's shameful and desperate behavior."

Earlier Tuesday on a "sports debate" aired on radio stations in Louisville and Lexington, Bevin weighed in, saying that Heiner had personally discussed undisclosed rumors about Comer last year.

"I don't know if he's behind the Comer story, but I'm telling you his people have been pushing this for a long time," Bevin said. "And Hal himself has personally told me months and months ago before I even got in this race, that he knew things, not had heard things, that he knew things based on conversations that his people had had about Jamie Comer. You told me that yourself, Hal. You told me in your office to my face.

"The reality is Hal Heiner is not who he pretends to be."

In Tuesday's interview, Comer said that he dated Thomas for only four months, and that the split was mutual. He denied helping her get an abortion, and said he has "no idea" why she would make the allegations.

He said the two had met in New York City in 2001 and she had given him a gift of a signed book then. Comer also said that he had several other girlfriends and has been married previously for two years prior to his current 12-year marriage, and no such allegations have emerged from any those relationships.

"This is the biggest shock of my life ... the abortion thing - we really lost our breath," Comer said. He noted that the Washington Post's political blog Tuesday called the Kentucky GOP governor's race the nastiest in the U.S.

In the story Monday, Thomas said she had documented proof of the abortion, but that she couldn't access it immediately. She told the Courier-Journal that the paperwork was in a safety deposit box in Kentucky and she could not immediately access it from New York.

Comer said he welcomed any such evidence coming to light.

"It's not true, but I wish she would produce it now," Comer said. "It would be good but it doesn't exist."