It wasn’t so odd for Deborah J. Palfrey being indicted this month.  She’s been charged for running a prostitution business.  She’s got past history.  The woman, after all, was sentenced in 1991 to 18 months in prison for running a call girl racket.

It wasn’t so odd that her client records listed about 10-15,000 names and addresses.  That’s almost 5% of Washington DC’s population, or almost the entire elite population of Washington, DC, whichever way you see it.

It wasn’t so odd that the woman wanted to sell her client records, for you have already charged her as a wholesaler of sexual services.  You know she’ll do anything
for money.  And as her attorney Mr.Sibley told the Associated Press over the client records, “There’s only essentially one asset she could liquidate.” One can imagine that at her age of 50 years, she may find her previous assets to have depreciated.

But what was odd Mr. Butler, what was extremely odd, was that as a federal prosecutor you sought a gag order trying to stop those client-records of a madam from being published. What was odd was that in your memo to the U.S. District Court you claimed the information is “detailed and sensitive.”  You claimed that “some of the personal information about former customers … is also sensitive based on the nature of that business.”

But the “nature” of that business is illegal.  That is what you have claimed, and that is why you have her on the dock.  So why are you getting soo “sensitive?”  How can the client records of a madam be privileged Mr. Butler?  Is it corporate commercial sensitivity akin to a trade secret? Is it protection of employment history?  Is it marital relationship? The complainant in a criminal case is the state Mr. Butler, you’re surely not trying to prevent the discovery of sexual conducts, and identities, of the clients of a Madam are you?

All claims of privacy known to law can arise only if the business she was running was legal Mr.Butler. But after having charged her with running an illegal business, you can’t gag her from publishing her customer information though you find it to be “sensitive.” That the court did not grant a blanket gag order should make you see the point. Mr. Butler, why are you so nervous?