December 30, 2024

Anne Sinclair Takes Helm at French Huffington Post

PARIS — Anne Sinclair smiled big for the cameras, not as the betrayed wife standing by her man, but as the star journalist she once was and hopes to be again.

The wife of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Ms. Sinclair returned to public life on Monday before more than 250 journalists in her new role as editorial director for the French version of The Huffington Post news Web site that debuted on Monday.

The news conference represented her first professional appearance since Mr. Strauss-Kahn, the former head of the International Monetary Fund, was charged with sexually assaulting a maid in a New York hotel last May and forced to abandon his quest for the French presidency. The criminal charges were later dismissed.

“She is definitely going to be our public face,” said Arianna Huffington, the founder of the site, in an interview on Sunday.

A former television anchor and the heiress to an art fortune, Ms. Sinclair seemed well-rehearsed and at ease in describing her goals and her role at Le Huffington Post.

She insisted that there would be no conflict of interest in carrying out her duties. “All important news will be treated normally, as it would be treated elsewhere,” she said, adding, “Anything that should be on the front page will be on the front page.”

She denied that her relationship with her husband would affect her work. “I do not mix private and professional life,” she said.

She dodged a question on whether she would support Socialist candidate François Hollande for president of France, and denied that she had played a role in her husband’s plans to run for president on the Socialist ticket. “I wasn’t invested in the candidacy of my husband,” she said. She described herself as “careful.”

Paradoxically, had her husband been the Socialist party’s candidate for president, this job might not have been hers.

Since this is France, where journalists are loath to pry into the personal lives of the rich and powerful, she was not asked questions that might have come up in an American setting: Why do you stay with your husband? Does he suffer from a mental illness and cannot control his impulses, as a former Socialist prime minister, Michel Rocard, said some months ago? Can you elaborate on your claim that your husband’s treatment in the American criminal justice system is comparable to the Dreyfus affair? How are you dealing with allegations that your husband might have been involved in a French prostitution ring now under criminal investigation?

Ms. Huffington, sitting by Ms. Sinclair’s side, defended her as a gifted journalist and a role model for other women.

“Every woman in her private life” has suffered “setbacks, ordeals,” Ms. Huffington said. A woman like Ms. Sinclair, she added, “gives hope and courage to every other woman.”

Le Huffington Post is a joint venture of AOL, the Internet company that owns The Huffington Post; the French daily newspaper Le Monde; and Matthieu Pigasse, a banker who acquired Le Monde in 2010 in partnership with two other investors.

The Web site’s tiny staff of eight will work out of Le Monde’s offices in Paris, and the news conference was held in Le Monde’s auditorium. Ms. Sinclair’s every gesture, every smile, every whisper in Ms. Huffington’s ear was greeted with the clicks of the cameras of dozens of photographers.

Ms. Sinclair delivered. Her makeup was impeccable, her fingernails meticulously manicured, her voice low-pitched and confident, her gaze focused on certain photographers.

“This is a chance for me,” said Ms. Sinclair. “The Huffington Post gave me a chance.”

Ms. Sinclair said she would be working full-time, even more than full-time in her new job, although day-to-day editing responsibility would fall to Paul Ackermann, a former journalist with the newspaper Le Figaro.

Asked why she picked she pick Anne Sinclair, Ms. Huffington reeled off a list of Ms. Sinclair’s experience and qualifications, and then added: “Every woman in her private life — if not her in public life — has been through setbacks, ordeals and problems. When we see a woman enter the arena again, and get engaged with what is happening in the world, it gives hope and courage to every other woman.”

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=d30eba6f547ef0869395575037cee322

Strauss-Kahn Case Seen as in Jeopardy

The sexual assault case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn is on the verge of collapse as investigators have uncovered major holes in the credibility of the housekeeper who charged that he attacked her in his Manhattan hotel suite in May, according to two well-placed law enforcement officials.

Although forensic tests found unambiguous evidence of a sexual encounter between Mr. Strauss-Kahn, a French politician, and the woman, prosecutors now do not believe much of what the accuser has told them about the circumstances or about herself.

Since her initial allegation on May 14, the accuser has repeatedly lied, one of the law enforcement officials said.

Senior prosecutors met with lawyers for Mr. Strauss-Kahn on Thursday and provided details about their findings, and the parties are discussing whether to dismiss the felony charges. Among the discoveries, one of the officials said, are issues involving the asylum application of the 32-year-old housekeeper, who is Guinean, and possible links to people involved in criminal activities, including drug dealing and money laundering.

Prosecutors and defense lawyers will return to State Supreme Court in Manhattan on Friday morning, when Justice Michael J. Obus is expected to consider easing the extraordinary bail conditions that he imposed on Mr. Strauss-Kahn in the days after he was charged.

Indeed, Mr. Strauss-Kahn could be released on his own recognizance, and freed from house arrest, reflecting the likelihood that the serious charges against him will not be sustained. The district attorney’s office may try to require Mr. Strauss-Kahn to plead guilty to a misdemeanor, but his lawyers are likely to contest such a move.

The revelations are a stunning change of fortune for Mr. Strauss-Kahn, 62, who was considered a strong contender for the French presidency before being accused of sexually assaulting the woman who went to clean his luxury suite at the Sofitel New York.

Prosecutors from the office of the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., who initially were emphatic about the strength of the case and the account of the victim, plan to tell the judge on Friday that they “have problems with the case” based on what their investigators have discovered, and will disclose more of their findings to the defense. The woman still maintains that she was attacked, the officials said.

“It is a mess, a mess on both sides,” one official said.

According to the two officials, the woman had a phone conversation with an incarcerated man within a day of her encounter with Mr. Strauss-Kahn in which she discussed the possible benefits of pursuing the charges against him. The conversation was recorded.

That man, the investigators learned, had been arrested on charges of possessing 400 pounds of marijuana. He is among a number of individuals who made multiple cash deposits, totaling around $100,000, into the woman’s bank account over the last two years. The deposits were made in Arizona, Georgia, New York and Pennsylvania.

The investigators also learned that she was paying hundreds of dollars every month in phone charges to five companies. The woman had insisted she had only one phone and said she knew nothing about the deposits except that they were made by a man she described as her fiancé and his friends.

In addition, one of the officials said, she told investigators that her application for asylum included mention of a previous rape, but there was no such account in the application. She also told them that she had been subjected to genital mutilation, but her account to the investigators differed from what was contained in the asylum application.

A lawyer for the woman, Kenneth Thompson, could not be immediately reached for comment on Thursday evening.

In recent weeks, Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s lawyers, Benjamin Brafman and William W. Taylor III, have made it clear that they would make the credibility of the woman a focus of their case. In a May 25 letter, they said they had uncovered information that would “gravely undermine the credibility” of the accuser.

Still, it was the prosecutor’s investigators who found the information about the woman.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/01/nyregion/strauss-kahn-case-seen-as-in-jeopardy.html?partner=rss&emc=rss