ND lawmaker quits panel leadership after texts with inmate

By JAMES MacPHERSON
Associated Press

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — North Dakota’s longest-serving state senator has resigned as head of a panel that oversees the Legislature’s business between sessions. The resignation comes just days after a published report that Republican Ray Holmberg had exchanged scores of text messages with a man jailed on child pornography charges. The Forum of Fargo reported that Holmberg exchanged 72 text messages with Nicholas James Morgan-Derosier as Morgan-Derosier was in jail on state child pornography charges. He told the Forum that his text messages with Morgan-Derosier were related to “a variety of things” but that he no longer has them.