The feds have reversed course and now say they are willing to provide evidence being sought by the hotel maid who accused former International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn of trying to rape her.
In court papers filed today, the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s Office said Immigration and Custom Enforcement will make “a good faith effort to be cooperative and resolve this issue without further litigation.”
The feds had initially said they would fight a subpoena for various records that Nafissatou Diallo wants for her civil lawsuit against DSK, who she claims attacked her in the Midtown Sofitel hotel last year.
Manhattan federal Judge Paul Crotty on Wednesday gave both sides until Oct. 4 to hammer out a deal over the requested records, which include include audiotapes and transcripts of phone conversations Diallo had with a jailed illegal alien one day after DSK’s sensational arrest.
But if a “mutually agreeable resolution” can’t be reached, the feds say they will seek to quash Diallo’s subpoena on grounds that the Bronx judge who signed it “lacked subject matter jurisdiction…due to ICE’s sovereign immunity as a federal agency of the United States government.”
The Manhattan DA’s Office dropped sodomy and attempted-rape charges against DSK after investigators caught Diallo in a number of lies, but his widely publicized arrest forced him to quit the IMF and forgo an expected run for the French presidency.
bruce.golding@nypost.com