Looks like Louisiana Sen. David Vitter and several other prominent men were spared having to testify about their sex lives in a trial may go down as the biggest sexual tease in courtroom history.
Lawyers in the case of accused madam Deborah Jeane Palfrey, better known as the “D.C. Madam,” had threatened to call Vitter, in addition to former State Department Deputy Randall Tobias and military analyst Harlan Ullman, as witnesses in Palfrey’s trial for prostitution-related racketeering and money-laundering.
But the case went to the jury today without any of the three taking the stand. Given Palfrey’s threat to pull out the phone records of more than 15,000 client calls in her defense - many of which she claimed were from politicians and high-level bureaucrats. Palfrey contended her company, Pamela Martin and Associates, was “a legal, high-end erotic fantasy service,” rather than a call-girl operation. She could face up to 55 years in prison, if convicted.
Vitter’s avoidance of a court appearance was a godsend to the married father of four, who had admitted last summer to being on the call list of Palfrey’s escort service, Pamela Martin and Associates. The one-term Republican senator apologized then for “a very serious sin,” but refused to provide any details.
He had hired big-shot Washington defense lawyer Henry Asbill to quash a subpoena requiring him to appear. Earlier this month at a pre-trial hearing, Asbill argued unsuccessfully that the only purpose of the subpoena was to humiliate Vitter and that, in any case, he would invoke the Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself.
In the end, neither side called him.
This is not the first time Vitter, a staunch conservative who opposes abortion rights, same-sex marriage and gun control, has faced accusations of patronizing prostitutes. Last year, Jeanette Maier, who pleaded guilty to running a $300-an-hour brothel in New Orleans, named him as a past client. In 2002, a Louisiana Republican Party official named Vincent Bruno had gone on statewide radio to accuse Vitter of paying for sex with a prostitute named Wendy Cortez. Vitter had denied both allegations.
Tobias, meanwhile, resigned his State Department post last spring after his name was connected to the escort service, although he said he received only massages, not sex. He had been the president’s global AIDS czar as well as administrator of the Agency for International Development as well as a generous donor to the Republican Party. The former chairman of Eli Lilly was recently appointed director of the Indianapolis Airport Authority.
Ullman, a military analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, has declined comment on the case, saying “the allegations do not dignify a response.” He is the principal author of the military “shock and awe” strategy used in the invasion of Iraq, and a columnist for the Washington Times.
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