UK prime minister’s close ally resigns after misleading statements about pornography

Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images(LONDON) — British Prime Minister Theresa May’s de facto deputy resigned Wednesday night, after he admitted to misleading the public with two statements regarding allegations that he kept pornography on his work computer in 2008.

May accepted the resignation of her right-hand man and old friend, U.K. First Secretary of State Damian Green, in a letter with what she called “deep regret,” adding that she was “extremely sad.”

“I share the concerns that have been raised by police and I expect those issues be properly investigated,” May said in a press conference during her visit to Poland.

Besides allegations that he kept and watched pornography on his parliamentary computer, Green faces another allegation from writer and Tory activist Kate Maltby.

Maltby wrote in an article for The Times in November that Green had touched her knee “fleetingly” in a London pub in 2015, when the two were meeting to discuss the possibility of a future career for her in politics.

However, in his resignation letter, in which he was “asked to resign,” Green said he did not recognize Maltby’s allegations.

“I do not recognise the events she described in her article, but I clearly made her feel uncomfortable and for this I apologise,” he wrote.

Green is the third cabinet member the U.K. prime minister has lost in two months, after the resignations of former Defense Secretary Michael Fallon, over allegations of inappropriate behavior with women, and International Development Secretary Priti Patel.

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