Patterico's Pontifications

3/26/2013

Is Bob Menendez Being Protected By the Same Spinmeisters Who Protected Weiner?

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 7:01 am



I have no idea, but I lay out a theory below that suggests that possibility.

I’m catching up to this story after having had spotty Internet access for a few days. But I see that on Friday the Washington Post reported:

A top Dominican law enforcement official said Friday that a local lawyer has reported being paid by someone claiming to work for the conservative Web site the Daily Caller to find prostitutes who would lie and say they had sex for money with Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.).

Since Tucker Carlson obviously didn’t pay someone to make up a story, it makes you wonder what’s really going on. It is interesting to note that everything about this story these days is getting filtered through the Dominican government. Perhaps the most significant line of the WaPo story is: “The account that Dominican authorities said they received from Figueroa could not be independently confirmed by The Washington Post.” Which is not to say, necessarily, that the guy isn’t actually making the silly claims. I’m just noting for the record that it’s not like we’re getting to hear the specifics from him firsthand.

When we last visited this story, we were looking at the Washington Post‘s crappy article touting a declaration that had several Rathergate-style problems with it. I also noted a clever observation made by Twitchy.com: that the Daily Caller very likely interviewed one of the same women who had been interviewed by Brian Ross, which made the woman’s story questionable . . . again, if we are to believe the Dominican government regarding what she is saying these days.

I am no more impressed with that WaPo article today than I was then. But the possibility still exists, which I raised in the last post, that the WaPo story was “fake but accurate” — that the affidavit they relied on was phony, but that the women’s stories were fabricated.

To me, though, that’s where it starts to get interesting.

For weeks, I have privately raised with some of the people who have been following this story closely the possibility that one or more of the girls who made these allegations were false flags of the type that appear to have been employed in the Anthony Weiner scandal. To me, that theory is starting to look more plausible all the time.

Here’s how it works. Weiner had a genuine “talking inappropriately to an underage girl” issue and a genuine “sending inappropriate crap to women” issue. Breitbart had the goods on some of this, and Weiner likely knew it. So, next thing you know, someone comes along and creates some false underage girls who supposedly talk to Weiner. The girls try to get Andrew Breitbart to bite on the story but he doesn’t. If he had, then the girls could have been triumphantly revealed to be fakes, and now everything Breitbart put out would be discredited. (This is ultimately what John Reid claimed to me in a series of angry emails: that everything I had said about an underage girl in Delaware was discredited because . . . something something. I didn’t follow his logic but his claimed motivations were clear: he wanted to protect Weiner.)

So, apply the same strategy to Menendez. He clearly has a “sleeping with prostitutes” issue — the Dominicans are not the only hookers who have claimed he slept with them. So maybe, just maybe, someone who knows a hooker story is coming out, and who supports Menendez, creates some phony hookers whose stories can be reported and then discredited. Now every story about Menendez and prostitutes looks suspect.

It wouldn’t shock me if the same Democrat spinmeisters were behind both operations.

Just a theory. Another theory is that the Dominican hooker story is true and the government is trying to whitewash it. Since everything that supposedly discredits the Daily Caller stories is coming through the Dominican government, I am perfectly willing to believe that theory as well.

Or, I guess, you could believe that Tucker Carlson reached into his wallet and paid some dude to hire Dominican hookers to make up stories about Bob Menendez. If you find that to be the most likely possibility, then you’re probably a Democrat.

36 Responses to “Is Bob Menendez Being Protected By the Same Spinmeisters Who Protected Weiner?”

  1. Ding.

    Patterico (9c670f)

  2. All of politics is now just the accumulation of Slush Funds. Protecting Menendez is merely protecting a specific Slush Fund. “Follow the Money” has never been more apt. The Hookers are involved just to sell popcorn.

    a curmudgeon (ca54bb)

  3. it wouldn’t be jersey if it wasn’t a lil bit trashy

    happyfeet (8ce051)

  4. Ah!!! Now I understand what the Weiner kerfuffle was all about, other than what he was doing. So much dishonesty, I can’t keep up with it all.

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  5. So, who’s behind the curtain pulling the strings, Hillary Clinton, Sid Vicious, David Brock, Valerie Jarrett, Spencer Ackerman, Katrina vanden Heuvel, etc?

    ropelight (75d434)

  6. or someone else paid to plant the story to hurt Menendez for their own reasons and the DC got caught up in the scam.

    time123 (bec298)

  7. So it’s a “Ben Smithing” only not just with words.

    Create a fake story to discredit which then discredits (supposedly and only because that’s how the State Media rolls) whatever REAL story is out there or getting out there.

    And notice this only happens/is done with stories that make DEMOCRATS look bad.

    Any other scandal is given full credence and any claims of innocence or fakery are laughed at, scorned and generally regarded as false.

    How does this stuff happen so REGULARLY?

    Why it’s almost as if it’s COORDINATED by some amorphous group of JOURNOLISTS or ASTROTURFERS.

    Someone check if Axelrod’s doing free lance work on the side besides being a paid media shill for the Democrats.

    Jcw46 (0af03c)

  8. Heh… After all, there’s no way Dominican politicians are involved in hookers and corruption….

    Auntie Fraud (2f38aa)

  9. or someone else paid to plant the story to hurt Menendez for their own reasons and the DC got caught up in the scam.
    Comment by time123 (bec298) — 3/26/2013 @ 8:11 am

    — When you can’t even make it to “1” it might be time to stop counting.

    Icy (8e3431)

  10. So, who’s behind the curtain pulling the strings, Hillary Clinton, Sid Vicious, David Brock, Valerie Jarrett, Spencer Ackerman, Katrina vanden Heuvel, etc?

    My vote would be Brock, since he has Soros money to play with. I don’t think the Clintons ever really pull the strings themselves. Their cheerfully cynical sleaziness inspires others to do their dirty work for them (I’m thinking of you, Vernon Jordan and Betty Curie). Katrina vanden Heuvel isn’t on the field playing; she’s merely a cheerleader off to the side. To extend that metaphor, Ackerman is junior varsity all the way and not capable of playing at this level. And as loathsome as Valerie Jarrett is, I can’t imagine her wasting her time with some pissant like Menendez. Here one and only client is Barack Obama.

    JVW (4826a9)

  11. Prior to the Iraq war, there was a forged Niger document which came to light.
    Looked good but the dates were wrong.
    I read a couple of folks who said the Sovs had developed the technique of providing forgeries proving they were doing what they were doing. Once the forgery was exposed, their operatives and useful fools were equipped to pretend and insist every piece of information the Sovs were really doing what they were doing was a forgery.
    Good cover.

    Richard Aubrey (5b5dfa)

  12. Amazing how lawyers and conservative morons will try to bend reality to the breaking point (and beyond) in order to cling to their prejudices…it gets especially fun when their idiotic ideas are cracked open for all to see.

    Being a wingnut means you are never wrong. By definition.

    High caliber (b4c0e5)

  13. Also amazing is the fact that conservatives reveal their own thinking and tactics more than anything else when they accuse the opposition of applying their own dirty tricks.

    “If we do it so MUST they!!!”

    LOLOLOL.

    High caliber (b4c0e5)

  14. it gets especially fun when their idiotic ideas are cracked open for all to see

    Put an ‘R’ after Menendez and get back to us, m’kay?

    lyle (5b5fd4)

  15. “Comment by High caliber (b4c0e5) — 3/26/2013 @ 12:26 pm”

    The troll has the projection reversed.

    SPQR (768505)

  16. *Heh… After all, there’s no way Dominican politicians United States Senators are involved in hookers and corruption…*

    Chuck Rangel: “Oh, that dominican beach house. Yeah, it slipped my mind it was there.”

    Steve57 (be3310)

  17. Hi calibre – Patterico asked you a rather straightforward question yesterday, which you cowardly ran away from. Care to address it today?

    JD (b63a52)

  18. or someone else paid to plant the story to hurt Menendez for their own reasons and the DC got caught up in the scam.

    Right . . . but that’s not the claim that is being reported. It is being reported that, according to this lawyer (if we are to credit the claims of the Dominican government) the Caller and 3 other news organizations paid for this story to be created.

    “High caliber” thinks this is the most likely possibility, when it is clearly the most laughable and absurd possibility.

    Patterico (9c670f)

  19. JD: For High caliber, the word of the Dominican government is sacrosanct, case closed, wingnuts paid for the story, LOLOLOL. You’ve already gotten as much “analysis” out of that one as you’re going to get.

    Patterico (9c670f)

  20. I was referring to the one where he called you a lying lawyer, and the rest of his garbage.

    JD (b63a52)

  21. I suspect I know the general origin of someone like “High caliber.”

    Patterico (9c670f)

  22. Ya think 😉

    JD (3cbfc7)

  23. The problem is not the Hookers. You premise would be right if this was various hookers all hitting the media at the same time.

    The issue is the Lawyer who sourced the Hookers is saying he paid them to lie at the behest of DC, CNN, Telemundo and Univision.

    Now whether that lawyer was lying before or lying now is a source of debate.

    Also the Lawyer who produced the hookers is repeating the story provided by the Dominican Government. That is to say when he recanted he basically repeated what the Government folks are alleging also — the girls got paid to lie.

    Bottom line is (1) the FBI is investigating Bob, (2) I have no doubt powerful Dominicans need to protect Bob or their gravy train ends, (3) Bob did not go to the DR with 2 other dudes to hang out 3 times, (4) Bob still has a USA hooker problem too.

    The key to the Dominican case is no finding hookers, it is finding the money that went from Bob/Melgen to the hookers and cops to recant the original story. Good luck finding that.

    Rodney King's Spirit (951136)

  24. Hilarious.

    High caliber (b4c0e5)

  25. No, you are not.

    JD (b63a52)

  26. The backstory re the late General Beauchamp, and how the ICSSI concession came to be granted to Melgen, his connection to Hank Asher, who is himself
    like a character out of ‘Burn Notice’ or ‘Justified’
    are more interesting angles.

    narciso (3fec35)

  27. #26 … then you know more than I do.

    Rodney King's Spirit (951136)

  28. There must be some conspiracy, otherwise we’d have to conclude that Tucker Carlson is just a hilariously inept smear merchant. And his Journolist work, getting someone fired from the Washington Post and then hired by Slate, a subsidiary of the Washington Post, really showcases his ability.

    ChadP (c770a7)

  29. Sorry I meant Miami Vice;

    http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/1988-03-18/news/8801170784_1_dominican-republic-dominican-army-noriega-arrival

    the other deals are a little beside the point.

    narciso (3fec35)

  30. It’s also funny how no one once menendez team is trying to discredit the gawker story about menendez bringing home what are clearly implied to be hookers all the time

    Auntie fraud (2f38aa)

  31. What’s so hard about getting to the bottom of this? Does Menendez have a wife? Someone stick a mic in her face, ask her about the prostitutes, and record her reaction. Is she still with him?

    UncleDan (71f73f)

  32. Anybody want to vote for “They’re all lying their fool heads off, no matter whose side they’re supposedly on?”

    Menendez is a politician; he almost certainly thinks he’s above petty concerns like marital fidelity. The Dominican government is certainly no better than it ought to be, they never are. The Washington Post is a passel of Liberal nitwits, only slightly better than the New York Times. On the other hand, Rightwing muckrakers are no likelier to be truth-sayers.

    At this point I’m prepared to discover that the truth is that Menendez was found in holed up in a coffeehouse in Finland, smoking unfiltered cigarettes with a lithuanian midget and an alien from Mars. And that this whole mess is an attempt to cover up that he’s a three-pack-a-day man.

    C. S. P. Schofield (adb9dd)

  33. Pathetic is more like it.

    High caliber (b4c0e5)

  34. 29. I guess it’s regarded as “cute” around here when someone points out a monumental FAIL of the lawyer who runs this dirty place.

    “Mark my words…”

    You mea like the Menendez underage prostitute scandal?

    You have the credibility of a piece of dried out dog crap except among the obvious morons who come here to share your delusions.

    Please explain the following …

    1) why this is a dirty place
    2) what monumental failure of Patterico’s you are referencing
    3) what makes you think that his credibility is that of dried out dog crap
    4) what delusions are you speaking of?

    JD (b63a52)

  35. If I can still believe Tawana Brawley’s story, I can certainly still believe the initial reports from these poor, underage hookers.

    Xmas (5b7d7a)


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