In Oklahoma, a county commissioner in McCurtain County resigned Wednesday, days after a local newspaper published secretly recorded audio revealing he spoke with local law enforcement officials about lynching Black people and assassinating reporters. Mark Jennings’s resignation came after Oklahoma’s Republican Governor Kevin Stitt called on him and three other officials to resign. They are county jail administrator Larry Hendrix, sheriff’s investigator Alicia Manning and McCurtain County Sheriff Kevin Clardy. In this clip, secretly recorded last month after a McCurtain County Board of Commissioners meeting and published by the McCurtain Gazette-News, Jennings discusses the county’s history of racist beatings and hangings with Sheriff Clardy.

Mark Jennings: “I’m gonna tell you something. If this was back in the day, would that — would Alan Marston take a damn Black guy, whoop their [bleep] and throw them in the cell, I’d run for [bleep] sheriff.”

Sheriff Kevin Clardy: “Well, it’s not like that no more.”

Mark Jennings: “I know. Take them down to Mud Creek and hang them up with a damn rope.”

Sheriff Kevin Clardy: “Yeah.”

Mark Jennings: “But you can’t do that anymore.”

Sheriff Kevin Clardy: “And the thing about it is” —

Mark Jennings: “They got more rights than we got.”

In another clip, Sheriff Clardy and Jennings are heard discussing hiring hit men to kill two journalists who’d reported on misconduct by county officials.

Sheriff Kevin Clardy: “The old saying is: What comes around goes around.”

Mark Jennings: “It will. I told you it will.”

Sheriff Kevin Clardy: “Yeah.”

Mark Jennings: “I know where two big deep holes are here, if you ever need them.”

Sheriff Kevin Clardy: “I’ve got an excavator.”

Mark Jennings: “Well, these are already pre-dug.”

Since the McCurtain Gazette-News published those and other hateful comments, Sheriff Clardy has so far refused calls to step down. The sheriff instead accused the publisher of the McCurtain Gazette-News, Bruce Willingham, of making the recording illegally, and predicted he would face felony charges. Willingham and his son, whose potential murders were discussed in the tape, have turned the recordings over to the FBI and the Oklahoma Attorney General’s Office.