Stipe Took New Orleans Trip With Phipps, McMahan, McAlester Blog Poster Asserts

A regular poster on the McAlester Watercooler blog has asserted that former State Senator Gene Stipe was among those who accompanied Auditor and Inspector Jeff McMahan and his wife on a 2003 trip to New Orleans. The poster has been accurate about previous incidents involving Stipe.

The referenced trip appears to be one that McMahan has admitted taking with Steve Phipps, at the time Stipe's partner in an abstract company empire regulated by McMahan as auditor and inspector. McMahan paid his own way on the trip, his spokeswoman Terri Watkins has said. At the time McMahan admitted taking the trip with his wife, Stipe's name was not mentioned.

Last month, The Oklahoman's Tony Thornton reported that Federal Bureau of Investigation agents seized campaign records from McMahan's home in Tecumseh and seized at least one piece of jewelry from his wife's sister's home at the same time.

The jewelry allegedly was purchased by Phipps, of Kiowa, under investigation by the FBI in the wide-ranging scandal in southeastern Oklahoma. Phipps has been in business with Stipe; both are targets of the investigation, which thus far has implicated other former state officials, employees of the Phipps-Stipe abstract companies, and employees of Stipe.

McMahan's office licenses and regulates the abstract industry, members of which poured tens of thousands of dollars into his 2002 and 2006 campaigns.

Thornton reported the jewely was seized the same day two agents spent 90 minutes interviewing McMahan in his Capitol office. It was McMahan's third visit by FBI agents. The first visit, the McAlester Watercooler writer asserts, came in McAlester two years ago.

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