Feds subpoena records pertaining to departing Oregon governor

Associated Press

SALEM, Ore.

Oregon Gov. John Kitz-haber announced his resignation Friday over a deepening influence-peddling scandal surrounding his fiancee, and on the same day, the U.S. attorney’s office issued a subpoena demanding records and electronic communications pertaining to the pair.

The subpoena was the first acknowledgment of a federal investigation against Kitzhaber and Cylvia Hayes. It marks yet another turn in a scandal that brought down Oregon’s longest-serving chief executive.

Kitzhaber’s resignation, which is to take effect Wednesday, cleared the way for Secretary of State Kate Brown to assume Oregon’s highest office and become the nation’s first openly bisexual governor.

Kitzhaber insisted he broke no laws.

“Nonetheless, I understand that I have become a liability to the very institutions and policies to which I have dedicated my career and, indeed, my entire adult life,” he said in a statement.

The announcement of the planned resignation capped a wild week in which Kitz-haber seemed poised to step down, then changed his mind, but ultimately bowed to calls from legislative leaders that he quit.

It’s a stunning fall from grace for a politician who left the governor’s office in 2003 and then mounted a comeback in 2010 and returned to his old job.

“This is a sad day for Oregon. But I am confident that legislators are ready to come together to move Oregon forward,” said Brown, also a Democrat. Unlike most states, Oregon does not have a lieutenant governor. The secretary of state is next in line to succeed the governor.

The subpoena — served on the state Department of Administrative Services — demands records not just pertaining to the pair, but also to 15 others involved with the Kitzhaber administration and with companies Hayes did business with as a consultant while she was also working as an adviser to the governor.