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Tuesday, Feb 9, 2010
Why has the former speaker of the House chosen to let his dirty linen be brought out for all to see?
Nov 24, 1999 | "We don't know. We just don't know. If you find out, let me know. It's a mystery." So said Marianne Gingrich, the soon-to-be ex-wife of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, when asked why she thought Newt was being a hard-ass in the divorce proceedings he initiated against her.
We were talking Tuesday morning in a courtroom in the Superior Court of Washington, minutes before the latest hearing in the case, and I remarked that it was hard to make sense of Newt's scorched-earth approach to the divorce, which has already revealed his six-year-long extramarital affair with congressional aide Calista Bisek and tainted whatever was left of his image as a family-values Republican.
If he's pocketing $50,000 per speech, as reported, why wouldn't he just strike a deal and avoid all the negative publicity? His strategy of all-out fighting -- and dragging his new love into the mess -- seems irrational to an outsider, I commented.
"It looks that way to an insider," Marianne said with a sad smile.
Her smile was broader an hour and a half later, after Judge Brook Hedge had ruled that Bisek had to turn over most of the records that Marianne Gingrich's attorneys had sought from her -- including telephone bills, credit card bills, bank statements, correspondence between her and the ex-speaker, appointment books, gifts from Newt and other materials dating back five years. (Neither Newt nor Bisek attended the hearing.)
Bisek's attorney, Pamela Bresnahan, had argued that the request was an invasion of Bisek's privacy and that most of the material was not relevant to the divorce proceedings. But Judge Hedge shot her down, noting that Bisek is "not just a bystander" in Gingrich vs. Gingrich. Consequently, Marianne Gingrich's lawyers -- John Mayoue, an Atlanta attorney, and Victoria Toensing, the Republican talking head and lawyer who once counted Newt as an ally -- will have the opportunity to comb Bisek's papers and seek out information about the secret affair Gingrich maintained while he was rising to power.
They also will get the chance to question Bisek directly. After some legal squabbling, Bisek agreed to submit to a deposition in December. Earlier this month, Bisek permitted herself to be deposed by Newt Gingrich's legal team, but Marianne's lawyers did not attend that hastily arranged session, citing a scheduling conflict. They also wanted to delay questioning Bisek until they had received the documents they had asked her to produce.
The Newt side appeared to have set up that deposition -- "a sham deposition," Mayoue calls it -- so Bisek's lawyers could then claim that Marianne's lawyers had had their chance to depose Bisek and elected not to do so. At that deposition, Bisek said that it was in 1993 that she and Newt "really started to know each other." Newt's lawyer, Randy Evans, declined to say what "know" meant in this context.
At Tuesday's hearing, though, Judge Hedge didn't fall for the deposition ploy, noting that Bisek attorney Bresnahan "can't fault" Marianne Gingrich's lawyers for skipping that first deposition. Bresnahan decided to avoid another courtroom loss by announcing that Bisek would sit the additional deposition.
That doesn't mean Bisek will answer all the questions, however. The hearing indicated that Marianne Gingrich's lawyers expect Bisek to plead the Fifth Amendment when she is asked about sexual relations with Newt. Because adultery is technically a crime in certain states, she could claim that admitting intercourse might be self-incriminating. If she takes this approach, Marianne's attorneys undoubtedly will ask Hedge to force Bisek to reply.
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