It turns out that the escort who claimed that Senator Bob Menendez paid her for sex now says that she was paid to lie:
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.
The claims of two women that they had had sex with Menendez seemed to confirm a tipster’s allegations that Menendez had patronized prostitutes while vacationing in the Dominican Republic. The tipster, who last spring began e-mailing allegations to a government watchdog group and the FBI, said he had evidence that Menendez had relations with underage prostitutes and participated in sex parties arranged by Melgen, his friend and political backer.
FBI agents conducting interviews in the Dominican Republic have found no evidence to back up the tipster’s allegations, according to two people briefed on their work.
Here’s the kicker:
The videotaped claims of two women, made with their faces obscured, were posted on the conservative Web site the Daily Caller. The site reported that “the two women said they met Menendez around Easter at Casa de Campo, an expensive 7,000-acre resort in the Dominican Republic. . . . They claimed Menendez agreed to pay them $500 for sex acts, but in the end they each received only $100.”
Daily Caller Editor Tucker Carlson did not reply to phone calls and e-mails requesting comment.
What a surprise.
He did not call back.
Kind of like when John Fund hid in the bathroom when police came in to talk to him a domestic violence beef.
Carlson is yet another product of the Republican nepotism machine, like Bill Kristol and Liz Cheney, and the results ain’t pretty.