A month ago, the woman accused of running a high-priced escort service had to tease and prod journalists with promises to get them to pay attention to her criminal case.
On Monday, after their investigations led to the fall of two public figures, Deborah Jeane Palfrey held court outside the foot of the federal courthouse, thanking the surrounding throng of reporters for helping to uncover the prominent clients’ identities and hinted that there was more to come.
“I believe there is something very rotten at the core of my circumstance,” Palfrey said in a soft but defiant voice, “and without money to hire my own investigators, I must rely upon your acumen and talent to uncover the truth.”
Palfrey, 50, said her defense strategy of using journalists to track down defense witnesses was already paying off. She said she would call on the prominent clients to testify that they did not have sex with her escorts.
Her civil attorney, Montgomery Blair Sibley, took offense when a reporter suggested that she was blackmailing her former clients.
“I don’t know why that’s blackmail,” Sibley said. “I call that due process of law.”
Palfrey, who has become known as the so-called D.C. madam, apologized to Deputy Secretary of State Randall Tobias for being exposed as one of her clients, but she said it was necessary to prove that her call-girl business operated legally.
Tobias, the head of the Bush administration’s foreign aid, stepped down Friday after he admitted to ABC News that he was a client of Palfrey’s business, Pamela Martin & Associates.
Tobias, 65, told ABC that he hired the escorts to come to his condominium for massages, not sex.
Palfrey said she and Tobias wouldn’t be in this predicament had the State Department official come forward with evidence that would have helped her case.
Tobias was the second prominent public figure to be outed as part of Palfrey’s criminal defense strategy. Palfrey released 46 pounds of phone invoices to ABC in hopes that the network’s media team would uncover prominent clients that she could subpoena to testify on her behalf.
On Monday, ABC News reported that the list of Palfrey’s customers also includes a Bush administration economist, a prominent chief executive officer, the head of a conservative think tank, lobbyists and military officials.
