Warren Mayor Jim Fouts on Friday angrily denied he made the statements in an audio recording in which a person who sounds identical to the mayor crudely remarked about abused women.

In the 17-second audio clip, the person says: “I can say I know what it’s like to be, uh” but doesn’t finish the thought. The person then says with vulgarity: “I want to actually meet some abused women and say, you know, ‘I’m available as a big brother, or a big fu—er.’ You know, meet a woman maybe about 35 that’s abused and you know, she’s open for some abuse from the mayor.”

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The person chuckles lightly during the last three words.

In a telephone interview Friday, Fouts told The Macomb Daily: “I’m tired of it. Warren residents are tired of it. It is nothing but phony, manipulated, manufactured tapes and perhaps taken out of context.

“It’s the same old garbage, over and over again!” he said.

The latest audio segment to be released, first reported Thursday by WJBK-TV (Fox2 Detroit), was made near the end of Fouts’ first term as mayor in 2011 by a former high-ranking city administration official who was accompanying the mayor on the way to a fundraiser or other event for Turning Point, a source connected to city hall told The Macomb Daily. Turning Point is a non-profit organization in Macomb County that provides a shelter and other services for domestic abuse victims and their children.

The individual and Fouts were the only people in the vehicle at the time of the recording, the source said.

The mayor said Friday he wants to know who is behind the audio clip and previous ones.

“All we know is it’s someone who lives in the sewer and slings mud with the tape. Let’s (expose) this creepy, crawly person who hides in the darkness,” Fouts said.

The mayor said he has talked to Warren City Attorney Ethan Vinson and a second lawyer whom he did not identify, to discuss the possibility of legal action but didn’t know who he could sue.

“Obviously it’s a disgruntled, sick individual. The person is probably a sociopath who needs some help,” Fouts added.

Fouts said he would challenge anyone to say they specifically were disparaged by him.

The audio is the latest in which Fouts purportedly is heard making vile or other disturbing comments. After the release of each audio segment, Fouts has vehemently denied he made the remarks although the voice on the clips sounds like him. None of the audio has been accompanied by video.

Last January, Fouts denied he referred to former United States senator Rick Santorum’s disabled daughter as a “mongoloid baby” with “her tongue hanging out.” In another audio recording revealed on motorcitymuckraker.com, Fouts – or someone sounding identical to him – used racist language on the night of his first mayoral election victory in 2007 toward former Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, and that he mocked African Americans six years later by imitating a monkey.

Earlier last January, motorcitymuckraker.com also published a report on a recording it obtained in which Fouts – or a person with the same voice – talked about prostitution in Amsterdam.

“You could get a 16-year-old if you wanted one,” the individual said.

The first of the recordings purportedly involving Fouts was released in December 2016 to a Detroit television station by Macomb County Executive Mark Hackel. In it, a voice sounding identical to Warren’s mayor called mentally impaired individuals “retards,” that they “aren’t really human beings” and suggested they be caged. Hackel said he felt compelled to release the recording and called on Warren’s mayor to resign.

The controversy became a political firestorm one month later. Just hours before the city of Warren’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day observance in 2017, motorcitymuckraker.com posted audio -- again purportedly of Fouts – saying blacks “look like chimpanzees” and referring to elderly women as “dried up c----.”

Less than 24 hours later, a group of elected legislative Democrats from southern Macomb County including county commissioners, state and federal lawmakers and some elected Warren city officials, called on Fouts to step down from office.

In a Facebook post in January 2017, Fouts said he received death threats. Warren police learned of the mayor’s claim but Fouts said he did not want the matter investigated and declined extra police patrols of his neighborhood.

During a deposition in 2018 as part of an employment discrimination lawsuit filed against the city by former Warren police officer DeSheila Howlett, Fouts under oath did not answer a question about the controversial audio clips but invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

In a separate deposition in the same civil lawsuit, political strategist Joseph DiSano, who consulted for the mayor a dozen years ago, told lawyers for Howlett and the city that Fouts used racist language in November 2007 on the night Fouts won his first term as mayor. According to a partial transcript of DiSano’s April 20, 2018 deposition, DiSano said he tried to arrange the Election Night phone call between Fouts and Kilpatrick.

“And at first – the phone call never actually happened, but the mayor said, ‘Why would I want to talk to the N-word?’” DiSano said, according to court records.

DiSano said he heard Fouts use the same racial slur one other time: inside a conference room in 2013 to discuss the 2015 election. DiSano said he discussed Warren’s changing demographics including the increase in the African-American population of Warren.

“This is the meeting where he stood up and did a dance like a monkey and made sounds like a monkey,” DiSano was quoted as saying. Under continued questioning during his deposition, DiSano said he believed Fouts was trying to make a joke and immediately regretted it.

Fouts repeatedly has insisted the audio clips were engineered by his political opponents in an effort to smear him and ruin his chances for re-election while trying to detract from the accomplishments of his administration and local economic development.

Fouts, who previously served as a city councilman for 26 years, is in the final year of his third, four-year term as the top elected official in Michigan’s third-largest city. He has not yet filed for re-election to a fourth term but reiterated Friday that he intends to do so.

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