Friday, January 17, 2003

Some revelations from the Insane Clown Posse...

In his book "A Vast Conspiracy" Jeffrey Toobin wrote of that evening, "The story (Lewinsky tapes) was converging on Starr's office from another direction. On the previous Thursday, January 8, Jerome Marcus, the Philadelphia elf, was scheduled to have dinner with an old friend from out of town, Paul Rosenzweig. Marcus and Rosenzweig had graduated from the University of Chicago together, in the same class as Richard Porter, the Chicago elf, who just happened to be in Philadelphia as well. George Conway, the new York elf decided to take a train down from New York to join the party. Of course, by this point, Marcus, Porter,and Conway had been working together for several years, providing surreptitious assistance on the Paula Jones case. Indeed, Porter had even tried to recruit the fourth member of their dinner party, Rosenzweig, to the Jones cause as well, but Rosenzweig had made other career plans: he joined the staff of independent counsel Kenneth Starr ( who was, simultaneously, Porter's law partner at Kirkland & Ellis)."

Toobin continued, "Over dinner at Deux Cheminees, a fancy French restaurant, Marcus told Rosenzweig about Monica Lewinsky---and about how, as he understood it, Vernon Jordan had asked her to lie about her relationship with the president in her upcoming deposition in the Paula Jones case. Marcus said there was a witness, Linda Tripp, who had tapes of Lewinsky making admissions. Shouldn't Starr be investigating this? Rosenzweig said he would pass the story back to his superiors." Or so the story went. According to the unedited manuscript given to Surovell, Connolly had in his possession Kirkland & Ellis billing records that blew a huge hole in Porter's story as to his whereabouts on that fateful evening. The records show that Porter billed a total of twenty-three and-a-half hours for January 8, 1998. The inescapable conclusion was that Porter did not attend the so called "party dinner", or he billed the client for the serendipitous dinner. In any event, except in the most bizare situtations, lawyers rarely bill for that many hours for one day.


Make sure you check out the court documents and emails.


Signorile and Conason provide context for those late to this story.