A lawyer who once represented the woman known as the "DC Madam" circulated documents Monday that he says contain the names of 174 government entities and businesses that were among the sources of phone calls to his former client.
Montgomery Blair Sibley has been promising that the phone records he has could affect the 2016 presidential election, but the papers he emailed to the media this week did not contain any obvious connections to the campaigns.
There was also no evidence of any wrongdoing on the part of the agencies or companies whose names he released.
"I am not releasing any individual names ... yet," Sibley wrote in an email.
Sibley has been trying to get the courts to lift an order that bars him from releasing any information about the records of Deborah Jeane Palfrey, who was convicted of running a DC-area escort service and then committed suicide in 2008.
U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts turned down a request to release the records last week, but Sibley has filed a second request with Justice Clarence Thomas.
The documents he issued Monday, which have not yet been docketed in Washington federal court, are linked to a million-dollar lawsuit he filed against the former chief judge of that court and its clerk. The Justice Department says his latest lawsuit should be dismissed because the court officials are immune from lawsuits over how they carried out their official duties.
Sibley — who was suspended from practicing law for three years in 2008 for a child-support issue and for filing "vexatious and meritless" claims and no longer works as a lawyer — argues the court order barring him from releasing the phone records violates his First Amendment rights.
