Tennessee Republican state Sen. Paul Stanley on late Tuesday announced that he was resigning from the state Senate effective Aug. 10, after his affair with a 22-year-old intern and a subsequent extortion attempt was revealed to the public.

In his resignation letter, Stanley, a 47-year-old evangelical Christian with two children, said that he has “decided to focus my full attention on my family.”
According to an affidavit filed in Davidson County by prosecutor Douglas Long, Tennessee Republican state Sen. Paul Stanley was having an affair with Senate intern McKensie Morrison, when the latter’s boyfriend, Joel Watts, found nude pictures of Morrison taken in Stanley’s apartment and attempted to blackmail the senator for $10,000. Collapse
Watts, 27, allegedly discovered a memory disc with explicit photos of Morrison that were taken in Stanley’s apartment on a cell phone. Watts threatened April 8 to release nude photos of Morrison at the senator’s apartment unless Stanley paid him $10,000.
In reply, Stanley contacted the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) for help.
After recovering the threatening text messages, TBI instructed Stanley to play along with Watts’ demands, according to court documents.
The TBI provided Stanley with the $10,000 Watts had requested and on April 9, the two met behind a Mexican restaurant to exchange the money for the disc. Once the cash and the disc were swapped, Watts was arrested, charged with theft of property and extortion. After a preliminary hearing last week, Watts’ case was sent to a grand jury for extortion. The theft charge was dismissed.
Police is investigating the role of the State Senator’s Mistress. However, it’s hard to find evidence against her. Morrison is no stranger to controversy. According to an article published this week in the Orlando Sentinel, the former central Florida high school honors student has been arrested for cocaine possession and was married to a man who is now in prison for beating a 75-year-old man in the head with a hammer in her presence.