An investigation by Edward Jay Epstein of New York Review of Books has uncovered some new, lurid details in the encounter between former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn and the woman who accused him of sexually assaulting her at the Sofitel hotel in New York. For example, it’s possible that e-mails to and from DSK’s IMF-issued BlackBerry were being surveilled in Paris, perhaps in connection to an attempt to smear him. “He had already been warned by a friend in the French diplomatic corps that an effort would be made to embarrass him with a scandal,” Epstein writes.
That same phone, which DSK believes he left in the hotel, bizarrely remains missing. “Its absence made it impossible for DSK to check — as he had planned to do — to see if it had been compromised,” according to the report.
Although criminal charges stemming from the encounter with a maid, Nafissatou Diallo, have been dropped because prosecutors found her to be untruthful, her civil case is still pending. Epstein’s investigative report contains diagrams of the scene and a nearly minute-by-minute blow-by-blow of the encounter that basically ended DSK’s bid to become president of France and tarnished his career, perhaps irreparably.
