'Welcome To New York': An Inside Look At The Dominique Strauss-Kahn Case

Defense lawyer Ben Brafman knew from the start that this case would be a disaster for the DA.

Thane Rosenbaum, Linda Fairstein, Ben Brafman, Ronald Guttman (by Bruce Gilbert)

Thane Rosenbaum, Linda Fairstein, Ben Brafman, and Ronald Guttman (by Bruce Gilbert)

While some folks were watching (or not watching) the World Series, I was at NYU Law School for a screening of Welcome to New York, the 2014 film by Abel Ferrara based on the prosecution of Dominique Strauss-Kahn (aka “DSK”). The movie, shown as part of the annual film festival of the Forum on Law, Culture & Society (FOLCS), was followed by a discussion featuring the following participants:

Dominique Strauss Kahn (IMF)

Dominique Strauss Kahn (IMF)

How was the movie? I agree with Ben Brafman, who opened his comments by saying, “I think this is a very bad film.” But as Thane Rosenbaum noted in his introduction, at Forum events the focus is on the post-screening conversation, not on the movie.

The film — and the real-life case it was based on, the prosecution of Dominique Strauss-Kahn on charges of sexual assault — at least inspired a lively and insightful discussion. Rosenbaum opened it up by reminding everyone about the case. In May 2011, Strauss-Kahn, director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), was pulled off an airplane as it was about to leave New York for Paris. He was arrested and charged by the office of Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance with sexual assault and attempted rape, based on claims by Nafissatou Diallo, a housekeeper at the Sofitel New York, that DSK had sexually assaulted her in his suite. (Victims of sexual assault are generally kept anonymous, but Diallo appeared on Good Morning America under her own name to publicize her allegations, so media outlets have referred to her by name.)

The case made headlines around the world, Rosenbaum noted, in part because Strauss-Kahn was a promising prospect for the presidency of France. How would you feel, he asked the audience, if Donald Trump was pulled off a plane and arrested on charges of sexual assault? (This generated knowing titters from the audience, given the claims of multiple women that Trump sexually assaulted them, as well as Trump’s own vulgar boasts.)

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Rosenbaum then mentioned a fascinating tidbit. He dropped a line by email to Brafman, a longtime friend, almost immediately after the DSK charges hit the news, and Brafman replied as follows: “Terrible: this is going to blow up in the DA’s face.” Last night, Rosenbaum asked Brafman: how did you know so quickly that the case would fall apart?

A few reasons, Brafman explained. First, DSK is “about half the size of Devereaux,” the character in the film played by Gerard Depardieu, while Nafissatou Diallo is a large woman with large hands (bigger than those of former NFL star and Brafman client Plaxico Burress, Brafman claimed). According to Ben Brafman, the struggle described by the Diallo was “physically impossible,” as well as undermined by certain physical evidence (e.g., the absence of the marks on both Strauss-Kahn’s and Diallo’s bodies that one would expect given the fight she described).

Second, when Diallo picked out DSK out of the lineup, she referred to him as “the man from the hotel.” Brafman, who has been to countless lineups over the course of his career, said her identification jumped out to him as suspicious. Typically a victim will say something like “that’s the SOB” or “that’s the guy,” not “that’s the man from the hotel.”

Third, every time Diallo spoke about the case, her account seemed to change. These inconsistencies played a major role in Manhattan DA Cy Vance’s ultimate decision to recommend dismissal of the case.

Offering a prosecutor’s perspective, Linda Fairstein noted that something happened in that hotel room, given that DSK’s semen was found on Diallo’s uniform. Fairstein added that sometimes apparent inconsistencies in a victim’s account are not true inconsistencies; for example, a victim might leave out a detail in her initial account that she remembers in a subsequent one. But in this case, Fairstein acknowledged, Diallo offered conflicting accounts of what happened (as well as a dramatic story about a gang rape in her past that she later admitted was a fabrication).

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Brafman didn’t deny that something happened between DSK and Diallo. He simply reiterated what he and co-counsel Bill Taylor of Zuckerman Spaeder maintained throughout the case: any encounter that might have happened between DSK and Diallo was not forcible, and therefore there was no crime.

How did Brafman and Taylor succeed in getting the Manhattan District Attorney’s office to see things their way? Because of DSK’s financial resources — or rather, the financial resources of his extremely wealthy then-wife, Anne Sinclair — the defense team was able to hire top investigators around the world. It didn’t take these investigators long to discover some of the credibility questions in Diallo’s past that contributed to the decision to dismiss the charges. Brafman shared some of this material with the government — although not all of it, saving some of it for cross-examination of Diallo at a possible trial — and it proved persuasive.

Fairstein added that Diallo made things tough for the prosecution because, after a certain point in time, she refused to come in and speak with them further. This might have been a strategic decision on the part of her lawyer, the late Ken Thompson (who went on to become Brooklyn District Attorney), to not create even more inconsistencies in her story. But it significantly undermined the ability of prosecutors to trust their key witness. Fairstein reminded the audience that as a prosecutor, you’re asking the jury to find the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. “If you don’t believe it yourself, how can you ask a jury to do it?”

Of course, a high-profile case like New York v. Strauss-Kahn isn’t tried only in the court of law; it’s also tried in the court of public opinion. Thane Rosenbaum asked Ben Brafman how that played out in this case.

Brafman said that DSK’s wife — Anne Sinclair, an accomplished journalist in her own right, “the Barbara Walters of France” — wanted to mount an aggressive public-relations campaign, going on the offensive against the victim and the DA’s office. Brafman advised her against it, reminding her that you don’t want to win a news cycle at the expense of your legal case. If you lose the legal case, he said, nobody will remember all the good press days that you had — they’ll just remember that you lost in court.

Brafman persuaded Anne Sinclair, and she agreed to defer to him on media strategy. One of Sinclair’s other advisers, a lawyer from France, also acceded to Brafman’s judgment — but not before warning him, “You better win.”

Welcome to New York [Forum on Law, Culture & Society]


DBL square headshotDavid Lat is the founder and managing editor of Above the Law and the author of Supreme Ambitions: A Novel. You can connect with David on Twitter (@DavidLat), LinkedIn, and Facebook, and you can reach him by email at dlat@abovethelaw.com.