How to Play a Bad Hand
by KTKMay 1st, 2007
I have to say I’m kind of digging the “Washington Madam” story. I hadn’t really been paying a lot of attention - DC bigwigs hire prostitutes from escort services?! Really?! - but as it slowly unfolds I have begun to admire the “madam’s” tactics more and more.
Step by step she has been hinting about releasing her clients’ names. At first she just suggested it might come out. Then she dumped her entire phone records (reportedly almost 50 pounds of documents) on ABC and let them back-trace the numbers to identify the Johns. Now she’s hinting that she’ll call those Johns to testify in her defense (i.e., that they hired escorts but not for sex) at her trial. The administration flack in charge of - you could have predicted this - “abstinence only” programs has already made that case for her in the press, then resigned. Now ABC has announced they also have the names of a White House official, a conservative “think” tank head, several other members of government, some military and corporate officers, etc. - with hundreds more in the wings.
It’s beautiful.
Seeing the hypocrites and creeps exposed is fun in its own right, of course, but, uncharacteristically, it’s not schadenfreude that gets me excited right now, but the simple joy of seeing someone trapped in a corner fight her battle so skillfully.
What she’s very clearly doing is ratcheting up the pressure one step at a time on the only people she knows can get the charges quashed (and who have proven they’re perfectly willing to subvert justice for personal consideration): administration insiders. Her line from the beginning is that she is being unfairly prosecuted and harassed - which creates plausible deniability for the administration to “discover” that its case is tainted and to dismiss charges on a technicality. The longer they drag their feet, the higher she builds up expectations. When they refused to help her in the face of threats, she knocked off one of their capos, and made it clear more was to come. She implicated right-wing figures outside the government to add pressure. If they still decide to go to the mattresses (hee!), she’s got 50 pounds of phone numbers to unleash. (This analysis presupposes that ABC is playing ball at least to some extent, but why wouldn’t they be? She wouldn’t have given them the numbers without demanding control over when they get published.) It’s quite straightforward blackmail and she’s using the newspapers as her conduit, which is even bolder. You have to admire it.
I’m surprised they haven’t dropped the charges yet, but I won’t be surprised if they eventually do so.
Another thing I like about her is that she’s poised, witty, and intelligent. In an age when even elected officials (let’s not even mention Shrub) can hardly string a coherent sentence together, she engages in sophisticated and complex arguments that actually make sense:
Put aside the titillation of the who’s-who list — at least in part — and instead investigate the disturbing genesis, the confounding evolution and the equally alarming continuation of this matter. I believe there is something very rotten at the core of my circumstance. . . .
[Her tactics are necessary] since the government has placed me in the untenable position whereby I do not have sufficient monies to undertake this extraordinarily expensive task on my own. . . .
Had [Tobias, the kinky abstinence creep come forward] earlier along with the many, many others who have used my company’s services throughout the years, I most likely would not be in my current predicament.
Put aside the misuse of the word “monies”, is there anyone else in Washington who can confidently reel off coherent and logical strings of 4- and 5-syllable words in a press conference about their own arrest in a sex scandal? (Add to that the fact that she’s pretty and looks kind of hot in those wire-rim glasses, and I’m starting a serious crush.)
The government, of course, has no freakin’ clue what it’s getting into. Neither did her court-appointed lawyer:
Some veteran Washington defense lawyers privately question Palfrey’s strategy: Who would willingly appear as a defense witness to help someone who has just made him the brunt of gossip and ruined his career and life?
(1) They’re not intended to appear. They’re intended to call the White House and tell them to back off. (The video sidebar says her lawyer has already received numerous calls from lawyers representing unnamed men, wanting to know if their phone numbers were on the list.) (2) It doesn’t matter whether they want to appear or not. If they get subpoenaed, of course they’re going to say they paid $300 and didn’t get laid, which helps her case and also makes them look like losers (so it’s back to #1 again).
Why does nobody understand this?
Even her defense attorney doesn’t seem to get it:
As a client, Palfrey may not be easy. She had been assigned one of the court’s most respected defense lawyers, A. J. Kramer. But the two had “irreconcilable differences” over how to best proceed with her defense, she said.
Kramer declined yesterday to comment on their split, but it was clear that Palfrey’s and Sibley’s propensity to hold news conferences after every court hearing did not mesh with Kramer’s style.
(She gets a public defender because the government has frozen her assets - proving that they don’t even know what game they’re playing. They pressure her by . . . giving her a free lawyer. She pressures them by . . . sending them down the tubes one by one. Who’s winning, here? I have to admit I don’t know how she’s paying her personal lawyer, Sibley - he may just be letting her run up a tab.)
The public defender apparently believes he’s got a criminal case on his hands - which is just plain bad lawyering. Look, doofus - your client’s guilty. Your job is not to let the case go to trial, not to go around subpoenaeing friendly witnesses. (She was running an embarrassing illegal business - there are no friendly witnesses.) Your client is doing that job for you. That’s why she holds press conferences at every new stage of the case. Get with the program, dude. Stop screwing around and start making some threatening phone calls, capisch?
All in all, it seems to me she’s giving the government more than a run for their money in what they probably thought was an open-and-shut case. You have to give her credit for it.
Categories: General, Legal Issues, News & Current Events |
That is awesome. Reminds me of the scene in The Departed where you learn that the boss (jack nicholson) has all records and phone calls copied to his lawyer.
She is playing her cards right. She’s not going to allow her ship to sink and she’s going to take those who helped it sail with her.
http://www.thenewsroom.com/details/252903/US
http://www.thenewsroom.com/details/252755/US
I can’t remember where I read it, but her lawyer had been getting a barage of phone calls from lawyers of people whose names may or may not appear in that client list. Isn’t that rich; some of those guys and gals were so immoral while pushing their conservative religiou moral agenda that they don’t even know which prositution service they might have frequented.
I’ll just bet that Gonzales wished that he’d have put someone in DAG there who could have shushed up the case.
Am I right in assuming you think there are no Democrats on the list?
What happens if the people pushing this prosecution are not guilty of anything and are telling their colleagues who are guilty “tough, you screwed up, now you pay the price.”
Does that make them solid for continuing the prosecution or jerks for not backing down and helping out their friends?
Will you be as thrilled about the whole thing if a bunch of married left-wingers are found to be on the list?
You are impressed with the fight she is waging and I agree she is doing an excellent job of blackmailing people. But it worries me that you would hold someone in high regard who is clearly and intentionally breaking laws just because you like seeing the people you think she is targeting go down.
[...] So, the feds want are building a case against an alleged Washington Madam and her prostitution ring. Trouble is, she’s naming names. She says the clients will support her contention that she provided escorts. Of course they will. No one wants to get caught being a hypocrite. I think it’s awesome. If I were her, I’d name one prominent client per day until the case went away. [...]
This is about the most talked about thing I’ve seen in awhile here in DC.
Simply incredible and wonderful.
20/20 is going to get a 100 share of the DC market Friday night. We’re having a party to watch. You know Dead Pool - where you predict who will fall next??? We’ve got a Sex Pool in my office, where we predict which government official is going to fall next . . . .
it worries me that you would hold someone in high regard who is clearly and intentionally breaking laws just because you like seeing the people you think she is targeting go down.
I said that it wasn’t schadenfreude that I was discussing in this case. I’m just admiring the way she’s defending herself effectively against the full weight of the government, by using their own bad behavior and hypocrisy against them.
As for Democrats vs. Republicans, it’s only the Republicans who can save her, because they’re the ones prosecuting her. I don’t care if Democrats get caught having sex, and I hope they’d have the decency not to lie or be hypocritical if they did (even Clinton covered up only to try to evade political persecution - and Hillary - you know he never regretted actually doing it, and hadn’t made a career out of persecuting people who do). But it doesn’t help her to target Democrats - she has to target the ones who are doing this to her.
As for her crimes, I don’t think what she is doing now is actually criminal. She must turn over her phone records to the prosecution if they are subpoenaed, but there is no reason she can’t turn them over to the press as well. The prosecution is entitled to call witnesses against her, but she is entitled to call witnesses herself - and to announce in advance that she will do so. It’s up to the prosecution how long they want this to go on.
If you’re referring to prostitution, I don’t really care. There are strong public policy arguments for and against legalizing prostitution, but I don’t think this case is a problem; I’m concerned about the possibility of abuse or coercion, but a $300/hr Washington DC call girl setup is exactly the kind of thing people think of as the model for legal prostitution. If she were committing a real crime I’d be more concerned. If her “victims” were under any pressure other than that caused by their own hangups and hypocrisy about sex, I’d be less amused. But they’re threatening to throw her in jail for helping their own colleagues (or themselves) have sex, and she’s threatening to say who did it. It’s up to them whether they’re adult enough to admit it (and suffer the consequences from their similarly uptight coreligionists), or are willing to tank their own prosecution to save themselves or their friends from having to cop to an orgasm.
Either way, it’s an enjoyable show.
I will NEVER go to see another Jack Nickleson movie, ever!!!!!!!