WASHINGTON — Saying he has “waited long enough,” the ex-lawyer of “D.C. Madam” Deborah Jeane Palfrey has released some of the names of companies, government agencies and organizations that had called her escort service between 2000 and 2006.
In a court filing in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia obtained by WTOP, Montgomery Blair Sibley included the names of 174 of the entities that had dialed Palfrey’s business, Pamela Martin & Associates. No individuals’ names were listed.
In 2007, as he mounted a defense in Palfrey’s racketeering case, Sibley sought, and was granted permission to identify 5,902 telephone numbers that showed up in Palfrey’s telephone records.
In response to a subpoena, Verizon Wireless provided Sibley with a CD containing 817 account holders’ names, addresses, Social Security numbers, and home and business telephone numbers.
In April 2008, a federal jury in D.C. found Palfrey guilty of racketeering, money laundering and mail fraud. She committed suicide in 2008, before sentencing.
Palfrey’s defense team never utilized — or shared — the information contained on the Verizon Wireless CD, because the judge eventually quashed the subpoena.
Since February of this year, Sibley has been attempting to be released from a 2007 restraining order, which he says prevents him from releasing the records Palfrey entrusted to him in the early days of her defense against charges related to the escort service she ran in the nation’s capital from 1996 through 2007.
Sibley has said previously that information gleaned from the Verizon Wireless subpoena would “contain information relevant to the upcoming presidential election.”
Sibley has not elaborated how the information might affect the 2016 election.
In regard to Monday’s filings, Sibley says “I am not releasing any individual names … yet.”
The companies, agencies and organizations listed in Exhibit B of Sibley’s latest filing are not accused of any wrongdoing. There is no indication why any of those 174 Verizon Wireless account holders dialed Palfrey’s number.
The list of released entities includes the following government agencies: Department of Health and Human Services, FBI, General Services Administration, U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, Internal Revenue Service, National Drug Intelligence Center, National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Army Information Systems Command, Department of Commerce, Department of State, U.S. Postal Service and U.S. Forest Service.
Others listed in the filing include the Archdiocese of Washington, Embassy of Japan, Bethlehem Steel, Constellation Energy/BGE, Hewlett-Packard, Johns Hopkins University, Washington Gas and several large law firms.
In July 2007, Palfrey and her attorney released her phone records for public viewing. After the release of the phone numbers, Louisiana Sen. David Vitter acknowledged being a customer of Palfrey’s service.
And the U.S. Supreme Court recently rejected a request from Sibley to be released from the restraining order.
Sibley’s license to practice law was suspended in 2008 for three years by the D.C. Court of Appeal. In addition, Sibley has sued the former chief judge and court clerk for $1 million each.
Sibley says keeping the Verizon Wireless records from the public view deprives him of his First Amendment Right of publication and denies “the People of the information they may deem material to the exercise of the People’s electoral franchise.”
