early and awkward

Meg Whitman Would So Love to Take a Polygraph Test

It’s a scandal as old as the trees: the illegal-immigrant housekeeper/nanny. California’s Republican gubernatorial candidate, Meg Whitman, is the latest politician to fall into this trap, but her case is special, because the accuser is the housekeeper herself! Nicky Diaz Santillan — who is now represented by Gloria Allred, obviously — applied to be Whitman’s part-time housekeeper in 2000, filling out all the necessary paperwork to prove she was legally allowed to work in the country. That part everyone agrees on. Where it gets murky is what happened with the “smoking document,” as Allred put it in a press conference today.

In 2003, the Social Security administration sent Whitman’s home a letter that said, whoops, your housekeeper’s Social Security Number doesn’t match our records. Whitman claims that neither she nor her awesomely named husband, Griff Harsh, ever saw the letter, and therefore had no idea that Santillan was an illegal immigrant until she confessed to them in 2009, at which point she was fired. Earlier today, Whitman called the whole thing a “baseless smear attack,” and said she’d be “delighted” to take a polygraph test to prove it, “if it comes to that.”

Well, it looks like it’s coming to that! About an hour later, Allred dropped the bomb — the (alleged) letter itself, complete with a note (allegedly) scribbled in Harsh’s handwriting: “Nicky, Please check this. Thanks.” Allred says that “if Whitman and Harsh deny the handwriting is his, she is prepared to present evidence proving otherwise,” according to the Los Angeles Times.

California: giving the craziness of New York’s gubernatorial election a run for its money.

Meg Whitman offers to take polygraph test on maid charges [CNN]
Document shows Meg Whitman lying, attorney says [SF Chronicle]
Allred produces evidence she says shows Whitman to be a ‘liar’ [LAT]

Meg Whitman Would So Love to Take a Polygraph Test