Image: AP

There are plenty of ways to arouse suspicion as a sitting governor. Here’s a pretty good one from Alabama’s Robert Bentley, who is currently beating back a festering adultery scandal: personally purchasing cheap burner phones at Best Buy.

According to AL.com, multiple employees of a Best Buy in Tuscaloosa confirm that they personally sold—or witnessed another employee selling—AT&T burner flip phones to the governor on several occasions. Said one source:

[U]p until the scandal came to light, Bentley HIMSELF would by (sic) little burner phones ... I witnessed it with my own 2 eyes and even sold him one,” the current Best Buy employee wrote via online message. “I sold to him once, saw him purchase twice.”

AL.com further reports that when they filed a public records request to see text message conversations on Bentley’s state phone they were given back a whole bunch of nothing:

But Bentley’s office only provided one short string of less than a dozen text messages between him and Mason in response to an AL.com public records request last year seeking text exchanges from his state cell phone, saying that he did not text often on that phone.

But in the leaked phone conversations, Bentley makes several references to sending and receiving texts. He also at one point talks to his alleged mistress and recently deposed advisor Rebekah Caldwell Mason on FaceTime, which suggests he used multiple phones, a suspicion confirmed by the ex-police officer who spoke about Bentley’s rumored affair on the record last week. Per AL.com:

The revelation that Bentley purchased disposable “burner” phones comes as he attempts to politically recover from allegations by former Alabama Law Enforcement Agency head Spencer Collier that Bentley had a sexual relationship with former top political adviser Rebekah Caldwell Mason.

Collier told AL.com last week that while he worked for Bentley, the governor was a text message user and frequently changed cell phones.

“Don’t buy your own burners” should probably be one of the first things they teach you in Governors School.

UPDATE (4/1) A new AL.com report notes that finance records Bentley filed with the state show that on June 2, 2015 his campaign spent $1,732.68 on “reimbursement for cell phones and prepaid wireless purchased at Best Buy.” Employees that spoke previously with AL.com say Bentley purchased AT&T flip phones that retail for about $15, so it’s unclear exactly what his campaign spent nearly two grand on. That’s a lot of minutes.