Problems Surface In DSK Accuser's Background

The Daily Beast reports:

At the 2115 Café on Frederick Douglass Boulevard in Harlem, where the hotel chambermaid who accused Dominique Strauss-Kahn of criminal sexual assault used to spend much of her free time, there are some interesting pictures on the wall. One shows owner Ibrahim “Abe” Fofanah, 46, gripping and grinning with a police captain. Another shows him with New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly ...

NYPD detectives initially ordered the arrest of Strauss-Kahn as he was about to leave JFK airport on a flight to Paris because the accuser’s testimony and corroborating accounts gave them probable cause to believe he had committed a serious crime.  The charges included criminal sexual assault and attempted rape, and DNA evidence of sexual contact between the accuser and Strauss-Kahn supported the case. Initially, the police did not conduct extensive interviews of the accuser’s close associates in the African community. But the cops did not stop investigating once DSK was arraigned.

“You want to check everything – everything,” said a law enforcement source familiar with the case who is not authorized to talk on the record. “You have to know if you are going to have something that will hold up in court.” Probable cause is not enough for a jury to convict; guilt must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt. “If the further investigation shows that you don’t have that kind of proof,” said the same source, “then you want to show that the NYPD was doing its job.”

So, according to this source, more detectives were assigned to look at the accuser’s possible criminal associations. Strauss-Kahn had hired TD International, an international investigating and troubleshooting firm with extensive CIA connections, to dig into the accuser’s background and connections. But the NYPD appears to have turned up the most damaging information first.

As The Daily Beast’s John Solomon confirmed earlier this morning, there were inconsistencies in the accuser’s asylum application when she came to the United States, unusual financial transactions into her personal accounts, and she had contacts with an incarcerated drug suspect. The day after she allegedly suffered the Strauss-Kahn assault, she was recorded talking to the suspect in jail about the possibility of getting money by proceeding with the charges against Strauss-Kahn. According to The New York Times, which first reported the concerns of prosecutors Thursday night, the woman had five different phones and had received as much as $100,000 into her accounts in the last two years from the man in prison and others, although those were not thought to be linked in any way to the DSK case.