Deborah Jeane Palfrey ran a DC-area escort service for several years, before getting caught by the police. As part of her legal defense, Palfrey’s lawyers said they would expose the service’s client list – not by releasing a list of names, but by releasing phone records.
One of those numbers, we now know, was traced back to Louisiana’s right-wing Republican senator, David Vitter, who ran on a “family values” platform.
But what’s easy to forget nearly a decade later is that the matter wasn’t fully resolved: the full phone records were never released.
...
Sibley, however, now wants to release the documents, and in fact, believes it’s in the public’s interest for him to do so. As Rachel explained last night, Sibley argued in his court filings that the materials from the D.C. Madam case “contain information relevant to the upcoming presidential election.”
In his latest filing with the Supreme Court, the lawyer added, “Time is of the essence. Given the significance of the upcoming political primaries and caucuses, in the looming Republican and Democratic conventions on July 18th and July 25th respectively, and given the impact of the presently sealed from the public record that this attorney seeks to release, upon those electoral deliberations, expedited resolution to this application is incumbent upon this court.”
Sibley went on to argue, “The delay by this court and resolution of this application in hindsight will intentionally favor one presidential candidate over others by protecting that candidate from the release of the D.C. madam phone records, which the attorney maintains are relevant to this election cycle.”
