Armed with newly obtained text messages, Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy is poised to accuse Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick of cheating on his wife with multiple women in an expansion of the perjury case against him, Worthy’s office confirmed Monday. The decision, mentioned briefly in a court hearing last Thursday, suggests that Worthy is prepared to aggressively rebut a campaign by defense attorneys to discredit text message evidence compiled against the mayor.

Attorney Len Niehoff, who teaches evidence at the University of Michigan Law School, said accusing Kilpatrick of lying about affairs with women besides former aide Christine Beatty could improve Worthy’s chances of winning a conviction.

So far, the only perjury charge against Kilpatrick dealing with infidelity accuses him of lying about sex with Beatty. He did so while under oath during a police whistle-blower case last year.

“If he in fact made statements that indicated that he had not engaged in any extramarital affairs and there are text messages indicating that he did, those would be allegedly perjurious as well,” Niehoff said. “I think what Kym Worthy is trying to do is simply make sure that the charge is broad enough to correspond with all the evidence that she anticipates presenting to the jury.”

A Free Press review on Monday of Kilpatrick’s trial testimony found that, in addition to denying an affair with Beatty, the mayor denied having sex with an unidentified Jamaican woman at a barbershop. One of the mayor’s former bodyguards had also accused him of meeting a woman at the Lofts apartments in Detroit for a late-night liaison. Kilpatrick was not asked directly about that allegation at trial.

The Free Press review did not find any blanket denials of affairs by the mayor.

Peter Henning, a Wayne State University law professor and former federal prosecutor, said prosecutors will need to find such testimony to have any chance of making the charges stick.

“He’s not charged with having an affair, he’s charged with lying,” Henning said. “They’re going to have to identify the question and answer. They’re going to have to link it up with false statements he made.”

He said prosecutors can’t use the allegation just to “show he’s a bad guy.”

Henning said prosecutors also might have trouble getting the evidence admitted.

“It is a risk,” he said.

Kilpatrick attorney James Thomas said Monday he was disappointed by the prosecution’s conduct, but declined to comment on the possibility of changes in the charges against the mayor.

Beatty’s defense attorney, Mayer Morganroth, called remarks made in court Thursday by Assistant Prosecutor Robert Moran “outrageous” because the defense hasn’t seen or assessed the evidence that formed the basis for his accusations.

Morganroth also said the contents of sensitive text messages collected by prosecutors were supposed to remain private until District Judge Ronald Giles rules on whether to make the messages part of the public court file.

“But they don’t even care,” Morganroth said of prosecutors. “They just want to get stuff out there any way they can to taint the jury. It’s outrageous but they do it anyway, whether it’s true or not, whether the information is privileged or whether it’s sealed or not.”

Kilpatrick faces a number of felony charges for, among other things, lying while under oath last summer when he denied having an affair with Beatty. That charge will be amended to indicate that Kilpatrick lied about his relationships with Beatty “and others,” said Maria Miller, spokeswoman for the Prosecutor’s Office.

Miller wouldn’t commit to a timetable for the amended charge, but said, “It will happen in the near future.”

Evidence of additional extramarital affairs involving Kilpatrick came from his own text messages, which reveal Kilpatrick had relationships with women besides his wife and Beatty, Miller said.

Prosecutors have obtained more than five years of the mayor’s messages as part of their criminal investigation.

Miller said there will be no new people charged in the investigation “at this time.”

Moran raised the possibility that other women would become part of the prosecution’s case almost as an aside Thursday as he argued that prosecutors should be allowed to publicly file court documents that included hundreds of previously undisclosed text messages.

Moran said most of the new messages went to heart of the existing charges of perjury, conspiracy and misconduct in office against Kilpatrick.

“I’ll put the defense on notice, we’re about to file an amended warrant and complaint to amend the counts that relate to conspiracy as it relates to testimony about having a sexual relationship with the codefendant,” Moran said. “We’re going to amend to add the language ‘and others.’ We’ve uncovered other evidence.”

On Monday, prosecutors filed the contested motion containing a stack of text messages for Giles’ inspection to determine whether the contents can be made public. Giles said he’d announce his decision July 14.

It is not known what messages are included with the proposed motion.

In opposing the proposed motion, defense attorneys contend the messages were obtained in violation of federal laws and would invade the privacy of people not directly involved in the Kilpatrick-Beatty criminal case.

But Moran said the new messages are relevant and should be open because they will help authenticate the text messages at the center of the perjury case — messages that defense lawyers have suggested publicly are not authentic.

When the Free Press broke the text message scandal in January, it released the contents of some messages showing that Kilpatrick and Beatty lied under oath.

Kilpatrick and Beatty were charged with perjury and official misconduct after the Free Press published the excerpts.

Prosecutors and defense attorneys argued heatedly Thursday whether the motion and new text messages can be part of the open court file without violating Kilpatrick’s and Beatty’s right to fair trials.

Moran told Giles that contested evidence is used every day in 36th District Court preliminary hearings to determine whether defendants will face trial. A circuit court judge routinely decides whether the disputed evidence will be in, he said.

Even so, Moran said that the pending motion will pass the test: “It’s not going to be suppressed. It’s coming in. … A jury’s going to see all the text messages."

Worthy said in a prepared statement Monday: “If ever there was a time for transparency in Detroit, the time is now. We have said from the beginning that we want this case to be treated as any other. We are litigating a criminal case; there should be no special arrangements because of the parties involved. In any other case there would be a public filing; this case should be no different.”

Jim Parkman, another of Kilpatrick’s lawyers, has said if the mayor’s case has gotten “special treatment in the state of Michigan, please don’t give me any more of it.”