Before you read any further, please take a moment to refresh. We believed Jim King was involved in the homophobic mail piece attacking Ken Herndon from May 2008. Read all about it by clicking here.

Then take a moment to read the following five stories: here, here, here, here and here. Now, let’s proceed.

Like we said, we believed Jim King was directly involved in the homophobic mail piece that cost Ken Herndon the Democratic Primary for Metro Council. And we weren’t the only people to believe so. But as time moved on after the May primary loss, we performed extensive research, conducted dozens of interviews and uncovered bits and pieces of information that caused us to question King’s alleged involvement.

While we started questioning whether or not King was involved, Ken Herndon’s camp (himself, a few supporters and his attorney who currently happens to be an anti-King Metro Council member) pushed more and more in the direction of focusing on Jim King. Note: We were Herndon supporters and still think he’d be a better Councilman than disconnected George Unseld. And we’ve gone out of our way to help Herndon throughout the investigation.

But Herndon’s alleged evidence includes an affidavit sworn by a young campaign staffer who has no solid evidence to back up any claims. The affidavit, which Herndon’s attorney(s) have been promoting throughout the investigation, claims the Herndon mailer was in King’s sphere of gravitational pull, based merely upon a conversation. Unfortunately for that campaign staffer, they also told us in October 2008 that he had never seen evidence tying Jim King to anything– though he did say, at the time, that he believed Katie King was involved in the mail pieces attacking her.

Long story short: We question whether or not King was ever involved and the Herndon camp is banking on blaming Jim King without any real evidence. Fine and dandy, right?

Not so. Hold your horses.

Read the rest of this bombshell and review surprising evidence after the jump…

Jim King (I know this is going to be tough to swallow, as we have been King’s chief critics for nearly a year and have attacked his daughter on multiple occasions) had nothing to do with the anti-Herndon mailer and we can prove it. Or he can, rather.

On April 6, 2009 Jim King sat down with respected polygraph examiner Walt Jones and, well, here… just read the memo for yourself:

CLICK FOR ENTIRE MEMO

The Test Results

1. Do you know anything about the homophobic piece that you have not told me about? Answer: No
2. Were you involved in any way in the production or distribution of the homophobic piece? Answer: No
3. Before it was mailed, did you see the homophobic piece? Answer: No
4. Do you know for certain who was involved with the homophobic piece? Answer: No

And there’s this:

It is the opinion of the Examiner, based on review of the polygraph charts, that no deception was indicated to the relevant questions on this examination.

As you can see in the memo, King was unaware of the homophobic mail piece and had never seen it until after it had been mailed out. He wasn’t involved and doesn’t know who is responsible.

There you have it. He passed with flying colors. Proof that’s good enough for us that Jim King had nothing to do with the anti-gay mail piece attacking Ken Herndon. And as much as we’ve hated Jim King and his politics for the past year, we have no reason to disbelieve the results of his polygraph examination.

Now that we know Jim King wasn’t responsible, it’s now time for the Herndon camp to move on to deeper investigation. And time for them to admit that they have no evidence tying Jim King to this case. That there’s no more evidence today about who is responsible than there was a year ago.

Final note: We’ve given Ken Herndon and everyone involved in his case ample time to respond to us. Unfortunately, some have decided to be rude, threaten us with attorneys and brandish about random epithets, accusing us of “not knowing half of what we’re talking about” and attempting to strong-arm them (all after begging us for jobs). Unfortunately for Ken Herndon, this damages his case and his credibility. We don’t take kindly to being attacked when working on a story. It’s silly and borderline ignorant for Herndon’s supporters to get belligerent with us.

All this sort of behavior does is leave us suspicious.  Especially after we’ve worked so hard to determine what the crap is going on with the mail piece.  There’s no one who wants a conviction in this case more than us – not even Herndon himself. It’s funny how quickly people will turn when you have honest questions for them.