Edward Epstein: “DSK may have been the victim of a conspiracy to derail his presidential campaign”

An article by investigative journalist Edward Epstein published in the New York Review of Books claims that Dominique Strauss-Kahn may have been the victim of a conspiracy to derail his presidential campaign.

Edward Epstein revealed in detail the hours leading up to the arrest of the former head of the International Monetary Fund for alleged sexual assault over Sofitel maid Nafissatou Diallo.

The investigative journalist has uncovered numerous holes in the hotel maid’s story and claims DSK’s BlackBerry may have been hacked.

Following the incident in May at New York’s Sofitel Hotel, staff were apparently filmed giving each other a high-five and doing a “dance of celebration” following the sexual encounter, according to Edward Epstein’s article.

Sofitel maid Nafissatou Diallo claimed she had been brutally and sexually attacked by DSK, shortly before his IMF BlackBerry went missing.

DSK had reason to believe his mobile phone had been hacked after he was told a private email had made its way into the hands of Nicolas Sarkozy’s political party UMP.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn,65, was Nicolas Sarkozy’s main presidential rival in the April 2012 election and he had been warned by a friend in the French diplomatic corps that efforts would be made to derail his campaign with a scandal.

After becoming concerned his BlackBerry had been hacked, DSK called his wife in Paris from the New York hotel that May morning, to ask her to contact a friend and have it examined, the article by investigative journalist Edward Epstein revealed.

The article continued to pick flaws in Nafissatou Diallo’s statement too, which coincided with the missing mobile.

Nafissatou Diallo, 32, entered DSK’s hotel room at 12:06 on May 14 for housekeeping and claims that within the six minutes she was in room 2806 with him, she was dragged near the bathroom and forced to give him oral sex.

At 12:13 DSK made a call on his BlackBerry to his daughter Camille, whom he was meeting for lunch that same day, to inform her he was running late.

After his scheduled lunch, DSK was due to be at New York’s JFK Airport to fly to Paris, at which time he realized his IMF BlackBerry had gone missing.

Edward Epstein claims that immediately after the incident with Nafissatou Diallo, an unidentified hotel worker was filmed sitting with her before meeting the hotel’s chief engineer, Brian Yearwood.

“The two men high-five each other, clap their hands and do what looks like an extraordinary dance of celebration that lasts for three minutes”, the footage showed.

Nafissatou Diallo, an immigrant from Guinea in West Africa, had worked for Sofitel for three years at the time of her claims.

After leaving DSK’s presidential hotel suite, her electronic key card records have shown that she then entered room 2820 on the same floor – a room which she had also entered several times that morning before the incident with DSK.

Nafissatou Diallo allegedly spent around three minutes in room 2820 before going back into the presidential suite, which was then empty after DSK had left to meet his daughter for lunch.

When Nafissatou Diallo gave evidence to court though, she said that she hid in the hallway after being assaulted and had not entered any other rooms after the alleged attack and no other rooms on the 28th floor.

Prosecutors found Nafissatou Diallo’s evidence to be false after seeing the electronic key records and wrote in a motion for dismissal that “the nature and number of the complainant’s falsehoods leave us unable to credit her version of events beyond a reasonable doubt”.

What also shadowed doubt around her claims was that after asking her supervisor what would happen if a guest made inappropriate advances to hotel staff, a 911 call to report the alleged attack wasn’t made until 1:31pm.

Nafissatou Diallo then did not arrive at a hospital to be checked up until 3:57pm – which was almost four hours after what she described as a “brutal attack”.

Meanwhile, despite DSK’s IMF BlackBerry having gone missing (the phone which contained a text warning him of possible hacking), no calls were made from the phone while it was missing but it had somehow been disabled at 12:51pm.

When former IMF chief arrived at JFK airport he called the hotel at 3:39pm to see if they had found his phone and gave them his whereabouts.

But instead of locating the phone, the police were rushed to the airport, where they arrested him and took him into custody in relation to Nafissatou Diallo’s attack claims.

The new article which covers the claims in doubt, imply that DSK was a victim of conspiracy in order to derail his campaign to challenge Nicolas Sarkozy’s political party.

But last night one of Nafissatou Diallo’s attorneys, Douglas Wigdor, said the article was “preposterous” and it was “not based on facts or evidence”.

“This is like saying Neil Armstrong did not land on the moon or that JFK was shot from the grassy knoll.”