"It's a shock. We're trying to figure out where the pieces are falling right now," he said in an interview at his law office in Westmont, N.J.
He said that his family left Lebanon for suburban Philadelphia's Huntingdon Valley in the 1970s to escape the turmoil in their homeland. His parents opened a Middle Eastern restaurant in Voorhees, N.J., called Sahara.
"My family is very patriotic; we came from Lebanon at a young age," he said.
Kelley later married and moved to Florida with her husband, who works at a cancer clinic.
Jill and Scott Kelley have been involved in at least nine legal actions since arriving in Tampa, according to court records. Most involve real estate transactions, including one foreclosure and an $11,000 judgment against the couple in a Pennsylvania case.
In another twist in the scandal, court records indicate that Petraeus and Allen intervened two months ago in a messy custody dispute on behalf of Jill Kelley's sister. Both four-star generals wrote letters supporting Natalie Khawam.
The judge in the case awarded Khawam's ex-husband custody last year of their son. He also called Khawam dishonest and lacking in integrity.
Khawam is a lawyer who works on health care fraud and whistleblower cases, according to her LinkedIn profile, which has been removed from the professional networking site. The sisters also competed in a cook-off filmed for a Food Network show called "Food Fight" in 2003.
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Follow Tamara Lush on Twitter at http://twitter.com/tamaralush
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Associated Press writers Kimberly Dozier and Pauline Jelinek in Washington, and Brendan Farrington in Tallahassee, Fla., contributed to this report.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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