Brian Snyder/Reuters/ZUMA
Last month, Maine Gov. Paul LePage came under fire for claiming 90 percent of the state’s out-of-state drug dealers are either black or Latino—an assertion the Republican governor said he could support with a 148-page binder he kept that cataloged mugshots and police reports for the alleged drug dealers. The remarks were widely condemned as racist, and contributed to mounting calls from both sides of the political aisle for LePage to step down from office.
On Monday, after much pressure, the contents of the embattled governor’s binder were finally released to the public. A cursory look at the material appears to paint a different picture from the one LePage previously described publicly.
After making the binder public, the governor’s office said it would make no further comment on its contents. The release comes just weeks after LePage left an expletive-laden voicemail on a state representative’s phone denying that he is a racist.