Lowery: A Letter From the Ex- FilesFederal investigators are talking with superlobbyist Bill Lowery’s ex-wife Melinda, it was noted this weekend at TPM. And it looks to me like she knows stuff. Interesting stuff.
Investigators have met twice with the woman who was married until 2003 to Lowery, whose connections, money and influence tie him to the Duke Cunningham scandal and spell trouble for Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA), as the federal investigation into his activities continues.
I admit, to my dismay, that the former Ms. Lowery has not yet returned phone messages I have left for her. But that tidbit over the weekend piqued my curiosity. So I trotted down to the District Courthouse and pulled the divorce file marked “Lowery v. Lowery.”
The details are not pretty, of course. If divorces are ranked for nastiness on a scale of 1 to 10, I’d put this at an 8. I’ll spare you the wildest details — the emotional outbursts in court, the mold problems, the lie detector test — and note only one snippet that caught my attention, buried in a pretrial document filed by Bill Lowery’s legal team:
“In early January 2000. . . Ms. Lowery attempted to blackmail Mr. Lowery to end the marriage” by threatening to release a letter that would be “damaging [to] his social, political and professional relationships. . . .
“She threatened to send out one of two versions of a letter (one nastier than the other) to 200 of Mr. Lowery’s social, business (including clients) and political friends and associates ‘explaining’ her reasons for leaving the marriage.”
Hm. I wonder if she’s still got that letter — the “nasty” version. More to the point: I wonder if federal investigators got their mitts on it?
