David Vitter

Watchdog Files Ethics Complaint against Senator John

Paul Kiel | July 19, 2007, 2:16PM

More troubles for Sen. David Vitter (R-LA). Washington, D.C. watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has filed an ethics complaint against him, based on his admitted use of the D.C. Madam's escort service. The basis of the complaint?

Engaging the services of a prostitute violates both District of Columbia and Louisiana criminal law.

The Senate Ethics Manual provides that certain conduct may be improper even though it does not violate specific Senate rules or regulations. Such conduct has been characterized as "improper conduct which may reflect upon the Senate." This rule is intended to protect the integrity and reputation of the Senate as a whole. The Ethics Manual explains that "improper conduct" is given meaning by considering "generally accepted standards of conduct, the letter and spirit of laws and Rules..."

Whether or not Sen. Vitter is ultimately adjudicated to have broken any criminal laws, the Senate may still discipline him for improper conduct as it has other members in the past.

Unlike in the House, the Senate ethics committee does not require that a member file a complaint in order for it to be heard, so this could potentially become a liability for Vitter.

Update: Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D-NV) wants a "full airing" of the prostitute-scandal swirling around Sen. David Vitter (R-LA).

David Vitter

Paper: Vitter Was Repeat Customer

Paul Kiel | July 12, 2007, 9:51AM

Well, at least it wasn't during Lent. From The Times-Picayune:

A phone number for Sen. David Vitter, R-La., appears at least five times in the billing records of what federal authorities say was a Washington call-girl operation, the first just four months after he was sworn in to the U.S. House in 1999 and the last on Mardi Gras of 2001.

Under pressure earlier this week, Vitter acknowledged committing a "very serious sin" and that his number showed up in the records of Deborah Jeane Palfrey, who has come to be known as the "Washington, D.C. Madam." An attorney for Palfrey earlier said that Vitter's number was found once in the records, but a search of the documents by The Times-Picayune turned up four more calls to a number once registered to Vitter. The attorney said that clients also used phones in hotel rooms, so that not all the numbers can be traced to individual callers.

The records show that Vitter number was called by Palfrey's service beginning Oct. 12, 1999 and ending Feb. 27, 2001, which was Mardi Gras. Palfrey has said she was running an escort service that her employees were instructed not to engage in sex acts. But federal prosecutors say she was running a prostitution ring that netted more than $2 million in assets.

Records show that the return calls to Vitter's number generally lasted a minute or two and were placed in the evening. The phone number had a Washington, D.C., exchange. Vitter keeps an apartment in Washington where he stays while Congress is in session.

David Vitter

Flynt: Vitter Used Escort Service in 2001

Paul Kiel | July 11, 2007, 5:52PM

During a press conference this afternoon, Hustler publisher Larry Flynt released the phone record that led to Sen. David Vitter's (R-LA) admission that he'd been a customer of Pamela Martin & Associates, the escort service run by Deborah Jeane Palfrey, otherwise known as the D.C. Madam.

Flynt's investigator, Dan Moldea, matched the D.C. number -- which appeared February 27, 2001 for a 1.2 minute conversation on Palfrey's records -- to Vitter last Friday. Hustler called Vitter's office for comment on Monday afternoon; Vitter then released his statement to the AP admitting to using the service Monday night. Vitter was a member of the House at the time.

During his conference, Flynt said that he'd outed Vitter -- and would be outing others, because of his hypocrisy; or as he put it: "I'm not exposing anyone's sex life, I'm only exposing hypocrisy."

Flynt took out a full-page ad in The Washington Post in June, offering $1 million for "documented evidence of illicit sexual or intimate relations with a Congressperson, Senator or other prominent officeholder." He said that Hustler had a number of investigations still going as a result, and that he'd be releasing the data "as we have it."

Update: See the update on this here.

David Vitter

Hustler: We Outed Vitter

Paul Kiel | July 10, 2007, 1:38PM

A press release just out from Kim Dower, Larry Flynt's spokesperson:

Larry Flynt's ongoing investigation into the dirty secrets of prominent elected officials has exposed another hypocrite. Monday's confession of marital infidelity by GOP right-wing marriage-protection advocate Senator David Vitter of Louisiana was the result of a multi-pronged investigation launched and run by Larry Flynt, publisher of HUSTLER Magazine.

Within hours of a phone call from the offices of HUSTLER Magazine asking Vitter to comment on an article HUSTLER reporters were working on, Vitter ran to the Associated Press in an attempt to get ahead of the story.

As of 2 p.m. West Coast time on Monday, only Larry Flynt and the HUSTLER investigative team knew that Vitter¹s phone number appeared on the phone records of Deborah Jeane Palfrey, the so-called D.C. Madam. Within hours of obtaining the phone records, Flynt¹s team found what ABC News has so far been unable to ferret out. Flynt's team is currently continuing its investigation into improprieties by other high-ranking elected officials.

Senator Vitter, a churchgoing Catholic who is married and has four children, is seen as a hard-line right-winger. A staunch supporter of President Bush, Vitter has built his reputation on family-values platforms such as marriage protection and abstinence-only programs.

In opposition to same-sex marriage, Vitter recently stated, "Marriage is a core institution of societies throughout the world and throughout history. It's something that has provided permanence and stability for our very social structure."

Sen. Vitter announced his support for Rudy Giuliani in March and was tapped by the presidential nomination candidate to serve as his Southern Regional Chair.

Update: Here's more on this from Justin over at the Blotter.

Update: So maybe Vitter doesn't have such a blind faith in the Fourth Estate. Oh well.

Hookergate

Senator John Fessed Up

Paul Kiel | July 10, 2007, 11:29AM

It wasn't immediately apparent from the stories yesterday, but Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) showed great faith in the Fourth Estate yesterday, admitting to being a customer of the D.C. madam as a sort of preemptive measure. The madam, Deborah Jeane Palfrey, released her business' phone records to the press last week and uploaded the records to her website (currently down) yesterday. Apparently Vitter thought it was just a matter of time before some muckraker found him out.

Update: Actually, Hustler Magazine says it was behind Vitter's sudden statement.

Vitter's statement only admits obliquely that Vitter's number was on one of Palfrey's old lists. The AP's New Orleans' bureau apparently received the statement yesterday, and then spent some time trying to confirm its authenticity. "Vitter's spokesman, Joel Digrado, confirmed the statement Monday evening in an e-mail to The Associated Press," according to an early version of the wire story.

No one seems to know when (or how often) Vitter used the service; all his statement says is that it was "prior to his running for the U.S. Senate" in 2004. He'd been a congressman since 1999, and Palfrey's records date back to 1996. The AP still hadn't seen the records as of last night, since reporters were "unable to connect to Palfrey's website."

The records contain thousands upon thousands of numbers without names. Most of the recent records, dating from 2002 to 2006, were released to ABC News back in March; a team of researchers set to matching the numbers to names. Jeff Schneider, a spokesman for ABC News, said that they had not found Vitter's number in those records. "With the release of a full ten years of records, it seems clear that his number came up in one of the records we did not have access to," he told me.

As for now, the race is on for who can pile up the most vividly hypocritical quote from the family values (or as he put it, "Louisiana values") conservative. In the running: Sen. Vitter maligning the "Hollywood left" for violating the "sanctity of marriage," and Vitter arguing that President Clinton should step down for his extramarital affair (Vitter, by the by, replaced Rep. Bob Livingston (R-LA) after the speaker was forced to step down because of an affair). There are, you can be sure, many more. Glenn Greenwald has a rundown here.

Update: The prevailing quote of the day seems to be this one:

In 2000, Vitter was included in a Newhouse News Service story about the strain of congressional careers on families.

His wife, Wendy, was asked by the Newhouse reporter: If her husband were as unfaithful as Livingston or former President Bill Clinton, would she be as forgiving as Hillary Rodham Clinton?

“I’m a lot more like Lorena Bobbitt than Hillary,” Wendy Vitter told Newhouse News. “If he does something like that, I’m walking away with one thing, and it’s not alimony, trust me.”

“I think fear is a very good motivating factor in a marriage,” she added. “Don’t put fear down.”