A sheriff’s office in Oklahoma investigates an incident at a meeting of the State Board of Directors last week which would have involved images of naked women on television from the Office of the School of State.
The images were seen during the executive session of the board of directors, held in the office of the Superintendent Ryan Walters, reported the Oklahoman newspaper of Oklahoma City, citing the members Ryan Deatherage and Becky Carson, who attended the meeting.
NBC News has not confirmed the tales of Deatherage and Carson, which were both appointed by Governor Kevin Stitt, a republican.
Oklahoma’s County Sheriff launched an investigation, said spokesperson Aaron Brillack, after a request from the agency who oversees human issues for the government of the State.
The president of the Senate Pro Tem Lonnie Paxton and State Senator Adam Pugh, both Republicans, said on Friday in a joint statement that the office of management and corporate services, which oversees HR issues, conducted an investigation into the incident and worked on the appropriate channels to launch an investigation.
“This is a bizarre and disturbing situation that raises serious questions about the events and what happened during the executive session of yesterday at the Board of Education of the Board of Education in Oklahoma,” Paxton said in a statement concerning the Board of Education meeting, which was held on Thursday.
The accounts of the members of the board of directors, he added, “paint a strange and disturbing scene which requires clarity and transparency”.
The Office of Management and Enterprise Services did not immediately respond to a request for comments.
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A legislative assistant from the house of the president of the Common Education Committee, Dick Lowe, Caitlin Kilpatrick, noted NBC News to postpone the report by the Nondoc media who said Lowe attended the meeting. Lowe told the publication that even if he had not seen the video of naked women, he discussed the question with the two members of the board of directors who saw the images.
“Shocked would perhaps be a bit of euphemism. In the position in which this person is, it is absolutely without question which is not appropriate by a state official, even less this state official,” Lowoc told Nondoc.
Walters, a conservative republican, has prompted proposals to further integrate religion into schools, such as placing bibles. He also pleaded to demand students enrolled in state public schools to provide proof of American citizenship.
In a statement on Sunday on X, after the allegations surrounding the meeting occurred, Walters denied any reprehensible act.
“Any suggestion that one of my devices has been used to broadcast inappropriate content on the TV is categorically false. I have no knowledge of what was on the television screen during the alleged incident, and there is absolutely no truth to any involvement of reprehensible acts,” said Walters. “These lies are the desperate tactic of a broken establishment that is afraid of real change. They don’t only attack me, they attack the values of the Oklahomans who elected me to challenge the status quo.”
Walters and its spokesperson, as well as Deatherage, Carson and the other four members of the Board of Education, did not immediately respond to requests for comments.
The head of the minority of the State Chamber, Cyndi Munson, a democrat, said in a statement on Monday that the Democratic Caucus had made six calls in the past two years to request a special Bipartisan committee to investigate Walters on other questions.
“Before these recent allegations occurred, he has shown several times throughout his leadership that he has no interest in improving the public education system for students and teachers. He is mainly anxious to advance his own political and religious programs,” she said.
“These new allegations are serious and disturbing, and even if we are waiting for the investigation to be completed, I think it is prudent to recognize that there has been an urgent need for the change of leadership in the Oklahoma State Department for a long time.”