(Newser)
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Yesterday saw a Washington Post report that raised fundamental questions about reports that Sen. Robert Menendez was involved with Dominican prostitutes. Now, the Daily Caller, which originally broke the story, says the Post's takedown is full of holes: The paper misidentified an escort at the heart of the case, the Caller holds. According to the Post report, an escort named Nexis de los Santos Santana attested in an affidavit that she was paid by a lawyer to appear in a video claiming she'd been paid by the New Jersey Democrat for sex.
In the video, "those are my words and that is me, but it does not reflect the truth," she said, per the affidavit. That lawyer, in turn, says he was misled about how the tape would be used; the two said they believed it was to be used as evidence in a divorce case. The Daily Caller, however, asserts that neither of the women who appeared in its video exposing Menendez were named Nexis de los Santos Santana. The Caller points out other flaws in the Post story; for instance, it reports that de los Santos identified a prominent lawyer in her video confession, but the Caller said no such name was spoken in its video interview. The Post has now hit back, standing by its report and countering the Caller's claims that its reporter didn't reach out to the Caller before publication, reports Politico. Click for more tit-for-tat.
