Sen. Robert Menendez at Ridgewood REORG photo by Boyd Loving
Sen. Robert Menendez and the mainstream media: Malfeasance?
Posted by Erik Wemple on February 7, 2013 at 3:46 pm
Matthew Boyle is standing by his story.
On Nov. 1, Boyle published a piece on the Daily Caller site titled “Women: Sen. Bob Menendez paid us for sex in the Dominican Republic [VIDEO]“. To sort of nail down the story, Boyle conducted an Internet-video interview with two Dominican women who attested to having been (under)paid to have sex with Menendez and to having been treated both affectionately and indifferently by him.
The Daily Caller story introduced some terms now referenced frequently in hard-nosed coverage on the Democratic New Jersey senator. The romps, it reported, took place around Easter 2012 at Casa de Campo, a pricey Dominican resort. It noted that Salomon Melgen, a Florida eye doctor and campaign donor to Menendez, had a place at Casa de Campo. Also: Melgen’s plane around Easter 2012 took a trip from Florida to the Dominican Republic, with a detour through a private New Jersey airport near Menendez’s home. The senator recently had to reimburse Melgen $58,500 for free trips he’d taken on the aircraft, and a Senate ethics inquiry is homing in on the case.
To the readers of the Daily Caller, the prostitutes are anonymous, with video-fuzzing technology masking their faces. “Both asked that their identities remain obscured for fear of reprisals in the Dominican Republic,” says the piece.
That very anonymity is the reason why other news outlets, including the Associated Press, have called the prostitution allegations against the Democratic New Jersey senator “unsubstantiated.”
Unsubstantiated to other outlets doesn’t mean unsubstantiated to Boyle. “I talked to two of the prostitutes, I saw their faces, I heard their voices…and I know their names,” says Boyle, who has jumped to Breitbart.com since the Menendez story. “I’m not going to release [the names] because given the violent and dangerous nature of the business down there, these women are in jeopardy.”