Update

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — North Dakota’s longest-serving state senator says he’ll resign following a report that he had traded scores of text messages with a man jailed on child pornography charges. Republican Ray Holmberg already had stepped down as head of a powerful panel that oversees the Legislature’s business between sessions after a published report that he had exchanged scores of text messages with a man jailed on child pornography charges. Holmberg’s resignation is effective June 1. He had risen to become one of the state’s most powerful lawmakers in a career that spanned 46 years.

Previously…

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — North Dakota state Sen. Ray Holmberg 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 Holmberg had exchanged scores of text messages with a man jailed on child pornography charges. The 79-year-old Holmberg is the state’s longest-serving senator. The Forum of Fargo reported 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.