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Conservatives desperately want to believe that Sen. Menendez ripped off two Dominican prostitutes, regardless of the truth.
It was so funny to see conservatives like Dinah Lord eagerly transmit the Daily Caller‘s smear of Robert Menendez to all and sundry:
So it looks like Senator Robert Menendez D-NJ, sponsor of the Lily Ledbetter Act doesn’t really believe in equal pay for women. Well, not if you are a hooker in the Dominican Republic that is.
And it was equally funny to see The Daily Beast jump on the bandwagon, too:
The smoke of scandal about Senator Bob Menendez keeps revealing flashes of fire.
Why is it so funny to see these people actively slime Senator Menendez? Because of this:
An escort who appeared on a video claiming that Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) paid her for sex has told Dominican authorities that she was instead paid to make up the claims and has never met or seen the senator, according to court documents and two people briefed on her claim.
The woman said a local lawyer had approached her and a fellow escort and asked them to help frame Menendez and a top donor, Salomon Melgen, according to affidavits obtained by The Washington Post.
That lawyer has in turn identified a second Dominican lawyer who he said gave the woman a script and paid her to read the claims aloud. The first lawyer said he found out only later that the remarks would be videotaped and used against Menendez, the affidavits say.
And now all the entities that were so loudly pushing this ridiculous and improbable smear are oddly silent — and yes, that includes The Daily Caller’s Tucker Carlson: “Daily Caller Editor Tucker Carlson did not reply to phone calls and e-mails requesting comment.”
While we wait for the smear stenographers to find their voices and apologize, let’s try to guess who fed The Failing Holler the smear in the first place. Early favorites so far are James “fuzzy handcuffs” O’Keefe and Roger Stone, though the Washington Post story exploding the smear presents the possibility that the smear was orchestrated by “dark sectors” in the Dominican Republic.
Public domain photo from Wikimedia Commons.
9 Comments
O’Keefe? Stone? Rove?
Tucker Carlson?
The whole story was weird, mostly because it didn’t just have the “eeek. immoral whore-paying Democratic Senator!” aspect. Whoever set it up had to embellish it with the cheapskate detail that the Senator promised the sex workers $500 and then only paid then $100.
That has all the subtle trappings of an ethnic slur, and fits well with the very recent WaPo story that Menendez almost bankrupted himself paying back the rich donor for the flights he had never paid for to the DR.
I love a mystery. What famous sex tourist, is familiar with the Dominican republic?
Rush Limbaugh.
That was my thought as well. If not Rush, I bet it traces back to the state GOP.
Boxturtle (If I guess right, what do I win?)
How about Falls Church, Virginia?
My first guess was certainly O’Keefe. But maybe, reading about the connection to shipping, there’s another source who thought the shipping story too boring, needed some spicing up to get attention?
I saw this last night…weird, weird. And when it came out, I thought; odd; a sex scandal with a Democrat. Isn’t it always a Republican these days?
Apparently, it still is.
I learned there was some kind of scandal involving Sen. Menendez from…ta dah!…Jay Leno. It was the end of January and I caught only a tail end of part of his opening monologue, mostly ignoring it. I did hear something about a Dem senator being cheap and thus outed by a prostitute, then the name.
I googled and the only citations I could find were some right wing sites, all coming from the same right wing source about 1 or 2 days old.
So, how the hell did this make it so fast from a fairly obscure right wing blog to Leno’s writers? And why did Leno run with it with such light sourcing?
I mean I’m pretty sure Leno is Repub leaning, but, still, isn’t that a bit risky?
I wonder if he will apologize to Menendez on air….
I submit we still don’t know what actually happened and we may never know.
Obviously, this woman will say whatever she is paid to say. I see no more reason to trust her veracity today than I did when I first heard about her accusations.
Whatever the truth is in this situation, anyone who has ever been in bed with Musto is suspect, as is e who has ever been Mayor of Union City. At one time of another, Menendez has fit both those descriptions.