TAMPA, Fla. — Jill Kelley wants the world to know that she didn’t do anything wrong when she befriended top military brass.
The Tampa socialite at the center of a scandal involving Gen. David Petraeus has hired a top Washington attorney and seems to be trying to change the narrative about her friendship with the general, her past and her role as an “honorary consul” to the country of South Korea.
On Tuesday, Kelley’s attorney Abbe Lowell released emails, telephone recordings and other material that he and Kelley say proves she never tried to exploit her friendship with Petraeus.
Lowell wrote to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Tampa, demanding to know why the name of his client and her husband were revealed during the FBI’s investigation of Petraeus and his mistress, Paula Broadwell.
Officials said they were led to Kelley because Broadwell sent her threatening messages to stay away from Petraeus. Lowell addressed this in a letter to W. Stephen Muldrow, the assistant U.S. Attorney in Tampa.
“You no doubt have seen the tremendous attention that the Kelleys have received in the media,” Lowell wrote. “All they did to receive this attention was to let law enforcement know that they had been the subjects of inappropriate and potentially threatening behavior by someone else.”
Lowell added that federal privacy laws could be applicable to the couple’s information.
“These leaks most certainly had to come, at least in part, from government sources,” Lowell said. “The earliest and best example of the leaks would be the release to the media of the names of my clients. As you know, there are several rules and laws that seek to protect United States citizens against such leaks.”
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Tampa did not return telephone calls for comment Tuesday.
Kelley, a 37-year-old mother of three, became the focus of national media attention earlier this month. She and her husband, cancer surgeon Scott Kelley, befriended Petraeus and Gen. John Allen when the generals served at U.S. Central Command, which is headquartered at Tampa’s MacDill Air Force Base. Kelley became an unofficial social ambassador for the base. She was well known around Tampa’s social scene and often hosted parties at her waterfront mansion.
When the FBI investigated Broadwell’s emails to Kelley, they also discovered numerous emails between Kelley and the generals. The Pentagon is investigating the emails between her and Allen. Some have called a few of the emails between the two “flirtatious,” but sources close to Kelley say they were not.
The scandal this week cost Kelley her appointment as an honorary consul for the South Korean government, which she had gotten because of her friendship with Petraeus. The Koreans said she had misused the title in her personal business dealings.
Lowell sent another letter to a businessman for whom Kelley tried to broker a deal with South Korea.
The businessman, Adam Victor, said he met Kelley in late August at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, where they discussed having Kelley represent Victor’s company on a coal-gasification deal it was negotiating with South Korean companies.
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