(
)
The DSK maid’s bizarre media blitz has brought the case to the edge of ruin.
Furious DA sources yesterday told The Post that if there had been any doubt that hotel housekeeper Nafissatou Diallo would be destroyed on the stand with her already-wildly varying accounts of what happened between her and Dominique Strauss-Kahn, there is no more — after she doled out even more conflicting statements during a round of interviews to ABC and Newsweek on Monday.
“There’s so many inconsistencies now it’s incredible,” said one source, noting the slew of conflicting tales Diallo has allegedly told hospital staffers, cops, prosecutors, a grand jury and now the two media outlets.
“It’s like multiple choice — pick a version.”
For one, the DA sources said, the maid apparently suddenly and miraculously regained her memory of a conversation she said she had with Strauss-Kahn after he emerged naked from the bathroom in his Sofitel hotel suite — after telling a hospital worker that he said nothing to her as he tried to rape her.
“I saw this little man come to me. He come naked,” the 5-foot-10 woman told ABC News.
She told Newsweek that she exclaimed to him, “Oh, my God. I’m so sorry.”
She claimed he responded, “You don’t have to be sorry,” as he reached for her breasts. “You’re beautiful,” she said he told her as he steered her toward the bathroom.
She said she told him to stop: “I don’t want to lose my job.”
He answered, “You’re not going to lose your job,” according to the account she delivered to her media interviewers.
But just hours after the attack, she told a hospital counselor that Strauss-Kahn — then a French presidential hopeful — did not speak, The New York Times reported on July 5.
Sources told The Post that there are “many” other discrepancies between her official accounts and the versions she’s now telling the media — all of which have essentially doomed her case.
“It’s a mess,” one flabbergasted source said.
Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance Jr. already had been weighing whether to drop the case against DSK, and now — with the maid’s new accounts handing DSK’s lawyers powerful weapons to use in a cross-examination of her — it’s clear any prosecution of the former head of the International Monetary Fund would be a disaster, sources said.
Vance’s concerns first surfaced after the prosecution discovered that the maid had misled authorities previously about a number of issues — including her tax returns, a prior alleged gang rape in her homeland and her actions
right after her encounter with DSK.
Another crippling discovery by the prosecution was the fact that Diallo, a day after the alleged attack, discussed the case on the phone with an accused drug trafficker, who was being held in an Arizona jail.
The New York Times, quoting a law-enforcement officials, wrote that Diallo told the man “words to the effect of, ‘Don’t worry, this guy has a lot of money, I know what I’m doing.’ ”
Diallo’s lawyer challenges the accuracy of the translation.
The same man and others also reportedly deposited up to $100,000 in Diallo’s bank account. Diallo told Newsweek she hadn’t known they were doing that.
The Times also previously reported that DA investigators learned Diallo was paying hundreds of dollars each month to five phone companies — although she later claimed that she had only one phone.
Sources said Diallo, 32, spoke to ABC News and Newsweek without the consent of the DA’s office and without consulting prosecutors about the wisdom of such a move.
Those prosecutors, who have assiduously guarded Diallo’s identity and location for two months, would have urged her not to publicly preview the evidence that could come up at trial, sources said.
Diallo’s lawyer, Kenneth Thompson, told ABC News that he plans on filing a civil lawsuit against Strauss-Kahn this week.
Diallo claimed one of the reasons she went public was to contradict claims by sources who told The Post that she had been working as a hooker.
“I’m not” a prostitute, Diallo told ABC News.
“I’ve made some mistakes, but that doesn’t mean . . . this man tried to rape me. He tried to rape me. It’s not the same thing,” she said.
DSK’s lawyers, William Taylor and Benjamin Brafman, in a statement issued in response to Diallo’s interviews, said, “Her lawyers know that her claim for money suffers a fatal blow when the criminal charges are dismissed, as they must be.
“This conduct by lawyers is unprofessional, and it violates fundamental rules of professional conduct for lawyers.”