(Henry Blodget) In the past 12 hours, the news flow in the Petraeus sex scandal has taken a turn toward the bizarre.
Let’s recap:
- The center of gravity in the scandal has shifted to a mysterious woman in Tampa Bay whom many of our top military and law-enforcement brass appear to be obsessed with.
- This woman, Jill Kelley, is the wife of a surgeon and an “unpaid liaison” between the public and a nearby Air Force base. This “job” seems mainly to include hosting and attending parties and emailing with generals and FBI agents.
- Paula Broadwell, General Petraeus’s mistress, lost her mind and sent anonymous harassing emails to this woman.
- Kelley got freaked out by the harassing emails and called the FBI, thus triggering the investigation that, so far, has sucked in the head of the CIA, a top general, and an FBI agent.
- The FBI agent assigned to investigate the case lost his mind and emailed “shirtless photos” to the woman.
- Another top US general, John Allen, lost his mind and sent 20,000-30,000 inappropriate emails to the same woman.
- General David Petraeus showed up at a party at this woman’s house in a 28-car motorcade.
- The woman, Jill Kelley, has hired the same lawyer that defended Bill Clinton in the Monica Lewinsky scandal and the same crisis PR person who represented Michael Vick.
- The woman insists that she has done nothing wrong and that she’s the victim here (did anyone suggest she has done anything wrong?).
- The FBI agent who sent the shirtless photos of himself to the woman called Congress two weeks ago and leaked news of the investigation to House majority leader Eric Cantor.
- Paula Broadwell’s dad says, tantalizingly, that “this story is about something else entirely” and that the whole truth will eventually come out.
- “Classified” material has been found on Paula Broadwell’s computer, but both Petraeus and Broadwell deny that it came from him.
- The FBI just raided Paula Broadwell’s house.
If this story really is about “something else entirely,” we can’t wait to hear what that is.