Report: Rising Democratic Star Megan Barry to Resign as Mayor of Nashville Due to Sex Scandal

Rising Democratic star Megan Barry is expected to resign as Mayor of Nashville at a hastily scheduled press conference that will be held at Nashville City Hall at 10 a.m. central on Tuesday, according to The Tennessean and other local media outlets.

Barry admitted on January 31 that she had a two-year-long affair with her bodyguard, former Metro Nashville Police Department Sgt. Rob Forrest, as Breitbart News reported:

In 2017, Barry and Forrest took nine trips alone together outside of Tennessee, all funded by the city’s taxpayers, to Athens, Greece, San Francisco, California, and Washington, DC, among other places.

In the days subsequent to Barry’s admission of the extramarital affair, numerous damaging stories came to light, and three separate investigations — one by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI), another by a special committee of the Nashville Metro City Council, and a third by the Nashville Metro City Council’s Ethical Board of Conduct — were launched.

Among the new revelations reported on after Barry admitted to the affair were the following:

• Barry’s bodyguard lover, Sgt. Forrest, was paid far more overtime — $173,000 over two and a half years — than any other Metro Nashville Police Department officer on the Mayor’s security detail.
• Sgt. Forrest’s daughter, a recent graduate of Belmont Law School, was hired in Metro Nashville’s Legal Department after a strong recommendation from Mayor Barry for a job that was created specifically for her and for which no other candidates were interviewed.
• In October 2016, Mayor Barry’s Chief Operating Officer, Rich Riebeling, decided to remove authority for approval of Forrest’s travel requests with the mayor from Metro Nashville Police Chief Steve Anderson and gave that approval authority to Mayor Barry’s Chief of Staff Debbie Mason without informing Chief Anderson of the decision. The city’s information technology system, however, continued to show Anderson as the approving authority until February 9 of this year, when a report on the issue by NewsChannel 5 prompted Metro Nashville’s Director of Information Technology Systems to describe the error as “a computer glitch.”

Local media outlets are reporting that Vice Mayor David Briley will be sworn in as Acting Mayor of Nashville at 3 p.m. today.