Gary Condits newly-hired lawyer

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Gary Condit’s newly-hired lawyer Joseph Cotchett is now sending out a series of threatening letters to the Washington Post and other publications which have questioned whether Condit was carrying on a romantic relationship with missing intern Chandra Levy.

The letter to the Post accuses the paper of “a frightening violation of the ethics and standards of American journalism” and goes on to level charges narrowly tailored to anticipate a libel suit.
According to this article, more letters are set to be sent out to “another East Coast paper” (presumably, the New York Post?)on Wednesday and another to a local TV station in California next week. “Since so much as already been distorted regarding this case, all statements published regarding this matter will be reviewed by counsel from the perspective of potential defamation litigation,” said Condit’s Chief of Staff Mike Lynch.

Now, I don’t want to sound like a broken record, but from everything I can tell this is lots of bluster and legal threats without the congressman willing to come forward and deny the actual allegation. According to the MSNBC article, Cotchett’s letter says “the lawmaker has never stated to anyone that Levy spent the night at his apartment.”

Needless to say, that’s not the same as denying that she spent the night with him, let alone denying that she had an affair with him.

I’ll be honest, it used to drive me nuts when wiseacres like Mike Isikoff or David Maraniss used to ‘parse’ my man Bill Clinton’s statements for signs of lawyerly evasion or cleverly angled factual loopholes. But isn’t it just really, really obvious that these tactics just confirm the very suspicions which Condit is trying to stamp out?

I mean, he apparently refuses to issue a statement denying that he had an affair with Levy, let alone be interviewed by a reporter. Instead he sends this lawyer out to toss around claptrap about a “frightening violation of the ethics and standards of American journalism.”

Why?

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