Raffaello Follieri’s Big LieYou have to hand it to Raffaello Follieri: He certainly did have a pair of brass ones.
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A Field Guide to Bill Clinton’s Fonzworth BentleyOn Wednesday we noted that Clinton’s aide Douglas Band had a no-good, very bad day. He was deemed responsible for hooking the Clintons up with shady real-estate developer (and Anne Hathaway boyfriend) Raffaello Follieri in a Page One Wall Street Journal story (which also made mention of the possibly embarrassing-for-Band fact that one of his duties for Clinton was carrying the President’s mobile phone) and busted on Page Six for sending a snippy note to Osso Buco asking the restaurant to take down a photo of the owner and Chelsea, though as it turns out it is the owner’s constitutional right to put up said photo, even if Chelsea does not look that cute in it. But we really didn’t know who this Douglas Band was. So we did some digging around, and it turns out, he’s actually a little more interesting than your average wonk.
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Nino Selimaj Fights for Right to Display Picture of RegisOsso Buco owner Nino Selimaj, who recently received a threatening letter from Douglas Band, Bill Clinton’s Fonzworth Bentley, that demanded he remove a photo of himself with Chelsea Clinton from the wall of his restaurant, has decided to stick it to the man. According to Selimaj, removing the photo would set a bad precedent. “We have Derek Jeter, we have Regis Philbin, we have Rudolph Giuliani, Danny Glover, Mariah Carey [and] Sopranos [castmates],” Selimaj told this morning’s Post. Crazy though he may be, Selimaj seems to be legally in the right.
in other news
Douglas Band Is Having the Worst Day Ever Douglas Band, former White House intern and Bill Clinton’s longtime personal assistant, is having one hell of a day. First there was the Wall Street Journal story this morning, which basically blamed him for getting the Clintons to sink a ton of cash into a questionable real-estate deal with Raffaello Follieri and took an incidental shot at him for how his job used to be carrying the president’s cell phone around. Now Band’s gotten the Clintons into trouble with another loopy Italian.
