Dominican police: Women were paid to talk about Menendez

By Erik Wemple, WashPost, Updated: March 18, 2013

The video in which women from the Dominican Republic allege that U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez paid to have sex with them was a sponsored affair, according to the Dominican National Police. Those women were paid to supply their testimony, which they were led to believe was related to a divorce case. It’s an account squares with a story in the Washington Post reporting that one of the women had made an official statement saying she had been paid to make a video framing Menendez.

The police investigation challenges a Nov. 1 story by the Daily Caller. It said that Menendez had indeed done business with prostitutes in the Dominican Republic and used this very recording as the basis for the story. A graph from the story reads:

In interviews, the two women said they met Menendez around Easter at Casa de Campo, an expensive 7,000-acre resort in the Dominican Republic. They claimed Menendez agreed to pay them $500 for sex acts, but in the end they each received only $100.

The story didn’t advance a strong reason why the women would go on videotape to talk about an alleged client, other than the possibility that they were irked about being underpaid.

(More here.)