Prostitution is both legal and widespread in the Dominican
Republic, where as many as 100,000 women are part of the industry
in a nation that has become a major sex-tourism hotspot of the
Caribbean. So it would not be a crime for Sen. Robert Menendez to
have availed himself of such services during his trips to the
Dominican Republic, as has been alleged.
Menendez has strenuously denied patronizing prostitutes,
however, denouncing the accusations Monday in a CNN interview as
“smears that right-wing blogs have been pushing since the
election.” Any claim that Menendez consorted with hookers during
his Dominican holidays “is totally unsubstantiated,” the New Jersey
Democrat said. “It’s amazing to me that anonymous, nameless,
faceless individuals on a Web site can drive that type of story
into the mainstream.”
Alas, the senator’s indignant denial is false. That is to say,
the “individuals on a Web site” who are driving “that type of
story” are neither anonymous, nameless nor faceless. The reporter
who originally broke the Menendez story is Matthew Boyle, a young
investigative journalist who made a name for himself at the
Daily Caller before hiring on more recently at
Breitbart.com. Boyle is brash and aggressive — perhaps
occasionally, a bit too aggressive — but there is nothing
“anonymous” or “faceless” about him. Neither, for that matter, can
that description be applied to Marc Caputo of the Miami
Herald, or Neil Munro of the Daily Caller or any of
the other reporters who have been breaking stories about the
Menendez scandal in the past week, since the
FBI raided the Palm Beach, Florida, offices of Dr. Salomon
Melgen.
Melgen has been a generous political contributor to Menendez’s
campaign, and reportedly donated more than $60,000 to the
Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee during Menendez’s tenure
as DSCC chairman. Melgen is an affluent eye doctor and businessman
whose friendship with Menendez dates back to the 1990s, and the New
Jersey senator has admitted that he flew to the Dominican Republic
aboard Melgen’s private jet. Exactly what Menendez did during his
stays at Melgen’s mansion at Casa de Campo, a seaside luxury resort
development, is a matter of dispute. At least one Dominican
prostitute reportedly said last year that Menendez participated in
a series of sex parties arranged by Melgen. “That senator also
likes the youngest and newest girls,”
the woman said in an April e-mail forwarded by the tipster and
translated by the Daily Caller. The woman, whose
services were reportedly acquired through an escort service called
“The Doll Palace,” wrote that she had three trysts with Menendez in
2009: “The first one in February, and then in May and June. I
recall his visit in June so well because that month was my 17th
birthday.”
This is certainly a serious allegation because, while
prostitution is legal in the Dominican Republic, having sex with
16-year-olds is definitely against the law. Yet Menendez insists
that he never had sex with anyone at any time during his Dominican
trips. “Now, nobody can find [the prostitutes],”
Menendez told CNN’s Bash in their Monday interview. “No one
ever met them. No one ever talked to them, but that’s where we’re
at. So the bottom line is all of those smears are absolutely false
and, you know, that’s the bottom line.”
Again, however, the Menendez denial is false. Matthew Boyle says
he interviewed two of the women last year, and Boyle is adamant in
his belief that these accusers were telling the truth. This
presents a rather tricky dilemma for any journalist: Who is more
trustworthy, a Dominican prostitute or a New Jersey Democrat?
That dilemma seemed to be solved Monday when one of the women
whose name has been part of the accusations denied being a
prostitute and said she’d never met the senator. “I’ve never
participated in those activities,” 21-year-old Yaneisi Fernandez
told the Spanish-language network Univision. “I don’t know those
people or that man. … No, that is completely false. I don’t even
know that man. Not even through TV have I seen him.” In reporting
this denial, however,
CNN said it was “not able to verify Fernandez’s story.”
If neither the accusations nor the denials can be verified, how
can the truth be determined? Are statements by Dominican women only
credible if they deny having sex with Democratic senators?
If some elements of a story are proven false, does that invalidate
the whole story? But what if some other elements of the story are
definitely confirmed? This problem presents itself to journalists
because, when a team of Miami Herald reporters began
checking out the accusations against Menendez, they discovered that
much of the information supplied by the tipster “Peter Williams”
(believed to be a pseudonym) checked out as factually accurate. One
key fact in the story was the identity of Dr. Melgen’s alleged
former mistress, a Russian-born woman named Svitlana Buchyk.
“Public records show that a woman named Svitlana Buchyk got into
a minor crash while driving a Chevrolet Impala on Miracle Mile in
Coral Gables in 2010,”
Kathleen McGrory and Melissa Sanchez of the Miami Herald
reported. “The car belonged to Melgen’s wife. Buchyk gave
Melgen’s North Palm Beach address as her own.” The beautiful blonde
confirmed that “she had worked for Melgen in the past. But Buchyk
wouldn’t answer questions on the type of work she did.” If Buchyk
was vague about the nature of her “work” for Melgen, the tipster
Williams was quite specific, describing her as “one of the most
regular participants in the activities” with Melgen and Menendez in
the Dominican Republic.
Boyle published a photo of her Monday and reported that a
Florida court case in 2002 found that Melgen spent $700,000 on
another woman with whom he had “an intimate romantic
relationship.”
It is the relationship between Melgen and the senator, however,
that appears to be the focus of the investigation that led to last
week’s FBI raid in Palm Beach. Melgen had reportedly received help
from Menendez is the matter of a port-security contract between a
company owned by Melgen and the Dominican government. That contract
could be worth as much as $50 million a year for 20 years — that
is, a total of one billion dollars — except that Dominican
officials refuse to honor what they have condemned as the
“exorbitant” terms of the contract. Melgen’s financial situation
looks shady; he reportedly owes the IRS $11.1 million. But if he
could get the U.S. government to pressure the Dominican Republic
into honoring that billion-dollar contract, Melgen’s money worries
would be over.
Unfortunately for Melgen, however,
Matthew Boyle broke the story less than a week before Election Day
last fall and, while the mainstream media ignored Boyle’s
exclusive at the time, now the potential political ramifications
are quite serious. Even if it cannot be proven that Menendez
consorted with hookers, underaged or otherwise, during his visits
to Melgen’s Caribbean luxury resort, the New Jersey Democrat’s
connection to his Florida benefactor is sure to be subjected to
intense scrutiny now. The recent appointment of John Kerry as
Secretary of State created a vacancy in the chairmanship of the
Senate committee where Menendez is now the ranking Democrat. Some
might say it would not be entirely fitting, all things considered,
for the scandal-plagued Menendez to become chairman of the
Committee on Foreign Relations. If nothing else, the punch-line
opportunities could prove impossible for late-night comedians to
resist.
Photo: UPI
