Missouri’s Republican governor is admitting an affair after allegedly threatening to blackmail the woman.

TV news station KMOV in St. Louis reportedly has obtained a tape of a woman telling her then-husband she had a sexual encounter with Governor Eric Greitens in which he bound and blindfolded her. Describing the episode, the woman says, “I saw a flash through the blindfold and he said, ‘You’re never going to mention my name, otherwise there will be pictures of me everywhere.’” She says she and Greitens met because she used to cut his hair.

The woman’s ex-husband had recorded the conversation without her consent, and she isn’t commenting on the record. Her ex-husband told KMOV the recording was made shortly after the sexual encounter in early 2015. He said he came forward hoping to get ahead of the story after he was contacted by law enforcement and the media. “He took a picture of my wife naked as blackmail. There is no worse person,” the man said of Greitens. He added, “I think it’s as bad as it gets. It’s as bad as it gets when someone takes advantage of something.” (In the recorded conversation, the woman says Greitens apologized after the encounter and claimed to have deleted the photo.)

The governor is admitting the affair, releasing a joint statement with his wife saying they “dealt with this together honestly and privately.” Greitens’s lawyer, James Bennett, denied the allegation of blackmail in a statement tweeted by the governor.