Photo: AP

On Monday, Montgomery Blair Sibley, a former attorney for the so-called D.C. Madam, Deborah Jeane Palfrey, filed an application asking the U.S. Supreme Court to allow him to release records pertaining to her escort service, because those records “could be relevant” to the 2016 presidential election.



In April 2008, Palfrey, who ran the escort service Pamela Martin and Associates, was convicted of racketeering, using the mail for illegal purposes, and money laundering. Two weeks later, she hanged herself. A number of Beltway insiders were named in the scandal, including Deputy Secretary of State Randall Tobias and Senator David Vitter.

Sibley, one of her attorneys, claims to have been sitting on a number of documents, including 815 client names, for the better part of a decade, in cooperation with a 2007 restraining order. In February, when he first started making public noise about trying to get the order lifted, he could not explain to the Washington Post in detail what the records contained. “This is where I walk a fine line,” Sibley said. “I don’t want to say something that would violate the order.”

On a Gofundme Sibley started to help pay for his legal fees, he explains the provenance and contents of the records he claims to have in his possession:

In 2007, I issued an ex parte subpoena to Verizon Wireless, Inc. which required them to reveal account holder information for 5,902 phone numbers taken directly from the Pamela Martin & Associates phone record “Blackbook”. Verizon Wireless responded with a Compact Disk containing 815 names, addresses, social security numbers, and home and business telephone numbers of Verizon users who were known to have called the escort service in question, and were likely clients of the service. Additionally, Verizon Wireless provided to me the account information for some forty (40) other escort agency telephone numbers listed in the 2007 Verizon Yellow Pages as operating in the Metro D.C. area.



Early this year, Sibley filed a motion to modify the court order prohibiting him from releasing the records. In February, D.C.’s U.S. district court rejected (rather testily) his motion to have the order lifted, making note of the fact that Sibley’s license had been suspended. (According to the Post, it was a temporary suspension: Three years, in 2008, for being a “vexatious litigant.”)

Former Chief Judge Richard Roberts also noted that Sibley was replaced as Palfrey’s attorney in January 2008: “Why Sibley would have possession of subpoenaed records in a case from which he has been terminated and why he would not instead have turned all copies of them over to the defendant’s continuing counsel of record is not set forth in the motion.” In fact, Roberts did not permit Sibley’s motion to be filed at all.

So, now Sibley is taking his case to the Supreme Court—although, not before suing Judge Roberts and the clerk of the court for $1 million each, accusing them of violating his Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights. (Roberts retired this month, one day after being accused of sexual abuse.)

“Time is of the essence,” Sibley’s filing to the Supreme Court, submitted Monday, reads. Given the significance of the primary season and the upcoming caucuses, he argues, “expedited resolution of this Application is incumbent upon this court.” (Emphasis his.) What is more, he writes, keeping the information sealed from public view “deprives the People of the information they may deem material to the exercise of their electoral franchise.”

Sibley goes on to threaten, not subtly, that if the Supreme Court doesn’t rule that he should be allowed to simply file the motion to modify the restraining order, allowing him to release the subpoenaed information, that this will “appear to many to intentionally favor one Presidential candidate over others.”

“Such a result will further erode the faith of the People in a fair and impartial judiciary,” he continues. Plus, he’ll just release the records “containing the names and addresses of eight hundred fifteen (815) Washington D.C. clients of the D.C. Madam’s escort service,” to the public anyway.

Incidentally, Sibley is a Birther, and has sued the Supreme Court for treason—twice. DCist reported in 2012, when he nominated himself as a write-in candidate for president, that he had been disbarred from 13 federal courts and three state bars. His Gofundme is at $390 of the necessary $25,000.