Employees from the FBI, IRS, Japanese Embassy, Department of Commerce, State Department and the Coast Guard frequented the D.C. Madam between 2000 and 2006, according to her attorney.
Deborah Jean Palfrey ran an escort service in Washington between 2000 and 2006 and had clients with 174 companies, organizations and government agencies in the nation’s capital, according to documents filed by her attorney Monday. No names of individuals have been released by Montgomery Blair Sibley, who represented Palfrey.
Palfrey died from an apparent suicide in 2008 shortly after being convicted and sentenced.
In his emergency motion filed with the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia, Sibley wrote he had been forced to keep quiet about the clients since restraining orders were filed in 2007. He said information he has could affect the 2016 presidential election.
“By muzzling Sibley and thus keeping the relevant Verizon Wireless information sealed from public view — particularly during this election cycle — deprives: (i) Sibley of his First Amendment right of publication and (ii) the people of the information they may deem material to the exercise of the people’s electoral franchise,” Sibley wrote in his motion.
The scandal already entrapped some members of the political elite in Washington. Louisiana Sen. David Vitter admitted to having sex with some of Palfrey’s escorts in 2007.
The 174 companies and government agencies identified in Sibley’s motion Monday are from the cellphone numbers of Verizon Wireless customers that were in records subpoenaed by Sibley. About 815 Verizon customers were included in that subpoena.
Other government agencies include the Department of Health and Human Services, the U.S. Forest Service, different branches of the Army, the General Services Administration, the IRS, the National Drug Intelligence Center and the Department of Agriculture, among others.
Subpoenas from other cellphone companies were not returned, and Sibley argues he can identify only 13 percent of the possible customers of Palfrey and her escorts.
“Clearly, given the obvious public and quasi-public personnel and entities that Sibley was able to identify in the Verizon Wireless subpoena return,” Sibley wrote in his motion, “common sense dictates that in the remaining 87 percent of the quashed telephone company subpoena returns, Sibley would have succeeded in identifying thousands of other public and quasi-public personnel and entities whose private behavior reflects adversely upon their public duties.”
