DC Sex Scandal About To Break?

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DC Sex Scandal About To Break?

James Joyner | Tuesday, December 6, 2005

The Hotline passes on this rather odd story: DC Sex Scandal About To Break?

Sunday’s San Diego Union-Tribune blockbuster digging deeper into the Duke Cunningham’s relationship with “co-conspirator No. 1,” a.k.a. lobbyist Brent Wilkes. According to the U-T, Wilkes also “ran a hospitality suite, with several bedrooms, in” DC — “first in the Watergate Hotel and then” in a Capitol Hill hotel.

Come again? A “hospitality suite with several bedrooms”?

Talk about raising more questions, including:

– Why does a lobbyist need a “hospitality suite with several bedrooms”?

– Who uses those bedrooms and for what?

The U-T includes this deep in a long story called Contractor ‘knew how to grease the wheels’, which provides one of the better treatments of the Cunningham scandal I’ve seen and an inside look at the corrupt world of Washington influence peddlers. While some sort of sex scandal is possible here, given that Wilkes ran or had a financial stake in a plethora of resorts (detailed in the U-T story) where he sent Congressmen and their families, my guess is something less elicit. Remember, a great number of Members leave in lousy apartments in the District and fly back to their home states from Thursday night to Tuesday morning.

Josh Marshall is similarly skeptical while Kevin Drum wants more information. Kos thinks a “prostitution ring” conceivable but highly unlikely–in “tinfoil hat territory,” in fact. Jesus’ General, meanwhile, has a satirical take that I presume is intended to be funny.

About the Author: James Joyner is the publisher of Outside the Beltway and the managing editor of the Atlantic Council. He's a former Army officer, Desert Storm vet, and college professor with a PhD in political science from The University of Alabama. He lives just outside the Beltway in Alexandria, Virginia with his wife and infant daughter.

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