Sanford, lover received threat, journalist says
By: By TYLER BRIDGES
Published: Fri, 07/03 @ 12:01AM
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil— An Argentine television anchor, the only journalist known to have spoken with Gov. Mark Sanford’s Argentine lover since news of their affair broke, says the couple received an e-mail threat.
The threat came from the person Maria Belen Chapur says hacked into her Hotmail account.
Asked twice this week if Sanford had been threatened because of the e-mails, the governor’s spokesman said — both times — “No comment.”
Eduardo Feinmann, who worked with Chapur when she was a translator for Argentina’s C5N news channel, said a member of Chapur’s family told him of the threat last Saturday.
He said the family member told him the unidentified person warned Sanford and Chapur that “you don’t know who you are messing with.” He said he didn’t know how the two responded.
Feinmann said he was “totally certain” the threat allegation is true. “Belen Chapur and her family never lie. They are very well respected.”
Sanford spokesman Joel Sawyer declined to comment. Chapur could not be reached.
The alleged threat adds to the mystery of who hacked into Chapur’s Hotmail account and pirated the couple’s love notes.
In an e-mail to Feinmann the anchorman read on the air Sunday night, Chapur said her Hotmail account was hacked into about Nov. 24. She became aware of the intrusion shortly thereafter and by Dec. 8 had the account closed.
Feinmann said he was told the threatening e-mail arrived before Christmas 2008. The State did not get electronic copies of the e-mails — five in all — until Dec. 30.
The e-mails proved to be crucial to Sanford’s undoing. The State confronted Sanford about the e-mails June 24 after Sanford claimed he had been alone in Argentina and had spent his time there driving along the coast. Sanford later held a press conference during which he confessed to the affair.
By then, Sanford had had at least two other multi-night romantic liaisons with Chapur, once in January in the Hamptons, outside New York City, and again over Father Day’s weekend in Argentina.
Chapur, 41, is the mother of two teenage boys. With the exception of the e-mail to Feinmann, she has made no public statements on the affair.
In the e-mail to Feinmann, Chapur doesn’t mention Sanford, only tacitly acknowledging the affair by saying her private life “has been made public enough already.”
But Chapur did defend a friend who had accompanied her on a trip to Brazil against published allegations he was the hacker, saying he was “incapable of such a thing.”
Chapur also said she thought she knew who the hacker was but, because she couldn’t prove it, was obligated to keep his identity secret.
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