Menendez Hooker Says She Faked It

One of the Dominican escorts who said she was stiffed by Senator Bob Menendez now says she was paid to read a fabricated script and that in truth she has never met Menendez, according to a Washington Post report. (hat tip Star Ledger)

The woman identified a lawyer who approached her and a friend to make the videotape, according to affidavits obtained by the Post. That man has in turn identified another lawyer who gave him a script for the tape and paid him to find women to fabricate the claims, the affidavits say.

The escort was one of two women who taped videos that seems to support a tipster’s allegations that Menendez had patronized prostitutes while vacationing in the Dominican Republic.

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.

Daily Caller, the site that first broke the Menendez prostitution story has yet to report on this latest development.  Breitbart, the site that now employs the reporter who broke the story, posted a wire service piece on the escort’s latest claims.

UPDATE March 5, 8:35 am. Daily Caller Stands By Menendez Hooker Story. Washington Post Confused.

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Smoking Gun? Breitbart report points to Menendez on unreported private flight to DR

Will Senate Democrats continue to give Menendez cover if he lied to them?

The reporter who first broke the Menendez sex scandal story posted an eyewitness account of Senator Robert Menendez dining with Dr. Salomon Melgen one mile from Teterboro Airport on Easter morning of 2012, while Melgen’s private plane was being refueled for a direct flight to the Dominican Republic.

Menendez has admitted to taking three flights to the DR on Melgen’s jet.  One was paid for by the Democratic Senatorial Committee.  The other two were reported and paid for personally by Menendez…almost three years after the fact…as a result of NJ State Senator Sam Thompson’s ethics complaint filed in November of 2012.  Menendez paid $58,500 for the two flights last month.

The Dominican prostitutes who first fingered Menendez said they met him during Easter of 2012. Menendez’s and Melgen’s friend,  Dominican politician Vinicio Castillo Seman admitted that the senator was the Dominican Republic on Easter of last year, according to Breitbart.

In addition, Menendez’s and Melgen’s friend–powerful Dominican politician Vinicio Castillo Seman–recently slipped up and admitted the senator was in the Dominican Republic on Easter Sunday in 2012, at the scene of where the original alleged wrongdoing took place. “I’ve known Menendez as a friend and of my cousin Salomon Melgen,” Castillo said while attempting to defend Menendez amid the scandalous allegations that currently plague him. “No one has come forward on the allegations and evil accusations, we spend every Easter together in Casa de Campo.”

Though it is now known Menendez spent Easter in Casa de Campo in the Dominican Republic with Melgen and Castillo, it is unclear how he got there. He and his staff have continually refused to answer that question.

But it has appeared for a long time that Menendez got there via Melgen’s plane. Flight path data obtained by Breitbart News and published in early February shows Melgen’s plane flew from Melgen’s home city West Palm Beach, Florida, to Teterboro, New Jersey, on Easter Sunday morning. It stayed there at Teterboro from its landing at 11:30 a.m. until taking off to head straight to the Dominican Republic at 12:50 p.m.

It is during this timeframe Melgen’s plane was on the ground in New Jersey, refueling and preparing for the flight to the Dominican Republic, that Breitbart News’ eyewitness in the area said he saw Menendez and Melgen brunching together at Arena Diner a mile or so away from the airport.

If Menendez was on the Melgen’s flight to the Dominican Republic last Easter, he’s been lying to the American people, and the Senate Ethics Committee, since early January when he paid $58,500 for the flights he’s admitted to belatedly.

Menendez and his office continue to refuse to answer whether the senator was on that flight, or if he got to the Dominican Republic that Sunday another way.

Instead, Menendez says he’s got his hand on the plough and is looking forward, quoting the Gospel of Luke.

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School Days, School Daze

Thanks to the left stream media America is learning that while a student at an elite Michigan prep school, Mitt Romney was a prankster who sometimes went too far.  At least two of his pranks were cruel bullying incidents.  He lead a blind teacher to walk into a closed door and he traumatised an apparently gay classmate, who later came out, by forcefully cutting off his bleached blond hair, according to a poorly sourced exposé in the Washington Post.

Thanks to the right stream media, sourced in part by Barack Obama himself, we are learning, four years late, that while in high school the President was a heavy drinker, pot and cocaine user, who hung out with communist radicals.   He bullied a “plump, dark” Black girl.

In recent weeks we’ve also learned that Romney transported his dog to a family vacation on the roof of his car and that Obama ate dog.

We’re likely to be in for a lot more of these types of stories over the next six months.  We’ll also be in for disingenuous complaining from both the right and left about each others tactics.   All of this is a positive development for America.

Especially at the presidential level, it is the duty of political opponents to do thorough opposition research and to pitch what they find to the media.  If the free media doesn’t run with the findings, it is the duty of political opponents to buy media to expose their opponent’s foibles.  Then the free media will investigate, report and opine on the veractity of the charges.   It is the duty of responsible journalists to verify or debunk opposition research pitched to them and the public and report accordingly.

The traditional media, which is leftist for the most part, took a break from its presidential vetting duty in 2008.  Likewise, Barack Obama’s political opposition, the Clintons and John McCain, took a pass on vetting Obama.  The Obama camp and the traditional leftist media brilliantly employed the race card to thwart Obama’s vetting.

Both Obama and Romney should be vetted, by each other’s campaign and by the media, over the next six months.  It is not unprecedented for the media to vette an incumbent President.  CBS’s Dan Rather famously got in wrong and lost his job over Memogate during George W. Bush’s 2004 reelection campaign. 

As we enter the vetting season, one of the side benefits will be that the biases of the vetters will be revealed to a skeptical public.   As the Internet continues to transform how we get our information and plays a more significant role in political campaigns, the truth that there is no such thing as an unbiased media source will become more and more apparent.

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