A Minneapolis police officer has accused Senator Larry Craig of lying in an interview after his arrest.
Posted on 08/30/2007 6:37:17 PM PDT by Stoat
Thursday, August 30th 2007, 7:57 PM
A Minneapolis police officer has accused Senator Larry Craig of lying in an interview after his arrest.
WASHINGTON - The officer who arrested Sen. Larry Craig in a police undercover operation at an airport men's room accused the senator of lying to him during an interrogation afterward, according to an audiotape of the arrest.
On the tape, released Thursday by the Minneapolis Airport Police, the Idaho Republican senator, in turn, accuses the officer of soliciting him for sex.
"I'm not gay. I don't do these kinds of things," Craig told Sgt. Dave Karsnia minutes after the two men met in a men's room at the airport on June 11.
"You shouldn't be out to entrap people," Craig told the officer. "I don't want you to take me to jail."
Karsnia replied that Craig wouldn't be going to jail as long as he cooperates.
At one point during the interrogation, the officer told Craig: "You're not being truthful with me. I'm kind of disappointed in you, senator."
Meanwhile, more of Craig's Republican colleagues moved away from him Thursday in the wake of his guilty plea earlier this month to a reduced charge of disorderly conduct in the undercover police operation aimed at sex solicitors.
Sen. John Ensign of Nevada, who chairs the GOP's senatorial campaign committee, stopped short of calling on Craig to resign, but suggested strongly that he should.
"I wouldn't put myself hopefully in that kind of position, but if I was in a position like that, that's what I would do," Ensign told The Associated Press in his home state. "He's going to have to answer that for himself."
Sens. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., and Susan Collins, R-Maine, each turned over to charity $2,500 campaign donations they had received from Craig's political action committee. Coleman and Collins both face potentially tough faces for re-election next year.
Coleman and several other Republicans - including Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. - have called for Craig to resign his seat in the Senate. Craig already has agreed to a request by Republican leaders to give up his ranking status on the Veterans Affairs Committee and appropriations subcommittees.
Craig said Tuesday he had committed no wrongdoing and shouldn't have pleaded guilty. He said he had only recently retained a lawyer to advise him in the case, which threatens to write an ignominious end to a lifetime in public office.
GOP Senate leaders said they did not act lightly in asking Craig to give up his leadership posts temporarily. But they said their decision was "in the best interest of the Senate until this situation is resolved by the ethics committee."
On the tape, Craig and the arresting officer can be heard arguing over what happened in the men's room minutes earlier. Craig acknowledges that the men's feet bumped, but says nothing improper happened.
"Did we bump? Yes, I think we did. You said so. I don't disagree with that," Craig said.
But Craig disputes the officer's account that he swept his hand under the stall next to him in an apparent effort to advance the encounter. They even disagree whether Craig used his right hand or his left hand.
Craig said he was merely trying to pick up a piece of paper - an account the officer disputes.
"I'm telling you that I could see, so I know that's your left hand. Also I could see a gold ring on this finger, so that's obvious it was the left hand," Karsnia tells Craig.
"Well we can dispute that," Craig says. "I'm not going to fight you in court. I reached down with my right hand to pick up the paper."
Meanwhile, Idaho Republican Gov. C.L. (Butch) Otter told CNN that Craig's loss of his committee leadership posts was "problematic," adding: "I'm sure Larry and his family are going to take those things into consideration as they go forward with their decisions."
Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, said that "like most Idahoans, I was shocked by the allegations against Larry and by his guilty plea. However, I tend to judge people by the totality of their career and Senator Craig has been a dedicated public servant who has been an asset for Idaho for almost 30 years. At this time, I will not pass judgment on this matter."
He signs a plea of guilt while others defend him.
Too funny.
You do not know yet whether he was wrongly accused. Pleading to a lesser charge is not an admission of guilt.
It is folks like you which prompted the American Costitutional provision of innocent until prover guilty.
If there’s a homosexual equivalent it must not be within walking/swishing distance...
The homosexual equivalents usually have dirty, garish neon signs hung on them that say "Public Bathhouse", "Disco" or "ACLU Office".
Sorry, I haven't. Hopefully someone else will be able to help with your question.
since, apparently there is no evidence that anything really
happened, why should I believe anything criminal happened?
I disagree with you and I do think he’s guilty. He displayed the expected non-verbal communication to the officer of someone soliciting sex in a public restroom. He pleaded guilty to a lesser charge in order not to be publicly exposed. He displayed none of the anger one would expect from someone wrongfully accused of such shameful actions. He did not reveal anything about the incident to anyone, not even his wife.
Aside from all that the man is just too stupid to be a Senator, even a Republican Senator. This is not some illegal Sonoran peasant taken into custody by the gringo police, confessing to crimes he didn’t commit because the police said they would then let him go. This is a US Senator, who is supposed to have some understanding of human character and motivation, of ethics and of the way the world works.
He is someone who is elected to be better than this.
THe cop made a move toward the Senator.
Where did you get that? The cop claimed Craig bumped him, and Craig said he "had a wide stance"
He found it suspicious that the Senator waited for about a minute to go into a stall.
No, he found it suspicious that he was peering into his stall for an extended period of time.
The Senator said he was waiting for someone to leave as the stalls were full. Not unusual in an airport where usually I have to wait.
Agreed, nothing unusual there.
The cop found it suspicious his roller bag was in the stall against the door,,where else would the man put it.
No there is nothing suspicious about taking your luggage into the stall, but the officer's suspicions were alerted by the WAY he deployed inside the stall, using it to maximize the privacy in the way that gays do when using the stalls for sexual encounters. Presumably he laid it along it's longest edge, or maybe unfolded a garment bag to maximize it's use as a privacy curtain.
The feet bumped,,so what.
foot tapping and feet bumping is a well established method used by gays to establish contact in restrooms while giving them some measure of plausible deniability in the event of approaching a non-participant in their culture.
The man picked up something off the floor,,big deal.
Yes, I'm always keen to clean up public restrooms when I can, nothing better than to go scrabbling around with my bare hands where countless men have pissed on the floor to see if I can pick up a piece of toilet paper contaminated with a total stranger's fecal matter. Of course while doing so, I have to be careful not use another well established gay signalling technique, namely putting my hand under the partition in an attempt to have physical contact with the person in the next stall.
The cop took him to an interrogation with nobody else there based on the flimsy actions above.
I don't know if that is true but he recorded the conversation so what is your point?
I think the cop wanted a bribe.
Now there's solid deduction - Craig performs a string of not normal actions that clearly identify him to the officer as a gay looking for anonymous sex but you say it is all circumstantial, meanwhile the officer, who you have no information about whatsoever is allegedly corrupt -where's your proof? I didn't hear him soliciting a bribe on the tape, did you?
How do you know he went out of his way? He said he used that bathroom when he flew thru there. Is it next to his favorite place to eat? There are reasons one goes out of his way and sometimes it is to find a less crowded place. That is not evidence. But where did you get that information.
Fox news reported it, they said the bathroom was substantially out of the way and implied that it required him to exit through security onto the main concourse.
The whole thing is nebulous.
So you have a person, that other people claim to have had gay sex with, going out of his way to visit a known gay hangout (regularly by your account), exhibit, multiple signs (extended peering, foot tapping, foot bumping, hand under partition, luggage deployment) that identifies him to a cop as someone soliciting gay sex, and you think it is all nebulous.....
I suppose you also think that those middle eastern gentlemen last week that were riding the Seattle ferries all day, behaving strangely and gathering as much information on the working of the ferries as they could were just fun-loving tourists....
The evidence is in the form of witness testimony from law enforcement officers, corroborated (apparently) by audio tapes, all of which are admissible in court.
What is alleged to have happened is the solicitation of sex in a public area, which is a crime in most places that I'm aware of.
The officers felt that they had enough evidence to arrest him.
Do you really want Cameras in restrooms? Think about that for a minute. This is the only way to stop the pervs who use these restrooms as brothels.
I listened to the tapes of his interview with the arresting officer. That convinced me of his guilt. I’ve treated sex offenders for years and, just like a seasoned mechanic can tell you when the engine in your car is about to seize up, I can tell you Larry Craig is a chronic sex-offender and was guilty of cruising for sex in that ariport rest room.
Don’t judge a fellow until you have walked a mile in his shoes. Unless they are high-heels, then a half-mile will do.
Of course there's also the old adage, "If the shoe fits, wear it". In this case it may turn out that Senator Craig is well-suited for a pair of stylish pumps.....
“Throw him out!” Not your call, unless you are from Idaho.
It would be best for Republicans if Craig didn’t run for re-election, and maybe even resigned, but this is an absurd arrest, and it is huge double standard to kick him out of the Senate while far worse degenerates like Kennedy, killer of MaryJo, enjoy a long career there. So it wont be done, and only Republicans greater sense of shame and honor will lead them to live up to higher standards than Dems.
... “enjoying the embarrassment of this guy’s homosexual behavior” yes, but they are over-sensitive not to even mention what Bill will be doing with his free time in the White House should hillary re-occupy it.
If it can be shown that they lied, then I'm guessing that they will pay a far worse penalty than Craig will, if convicted.
There is the matter of the audio tape, which "may" include considerably more than what has been released to the public.
Time will tell, and hopefully justice will prevail.
Read the citation you used. The citation states correctly that Craig was the ONLY Idaho member of Congress to vote for amnesty. Crapo has consistantly voted against any form of amnesty.
but boy....you’d have to believe everyone else is lying
he needs to go....we are not the party of twink hunting bathroom pervs....geez
we can let the Dems claim that honor
can’t we just get some red blooded Alpha males who love women to represent us
like the Tennessee Stud for example (not me...the other one)
I always held Craig in fairly high regard until he became a supporter of the "comprehensive" shamnesty. Now this. He needs to resign now so that the Republican governor can put a decent Republican in the seat to hold it in 2008.
I too have degrees in psychology as well as a law degree and can agrue that if he were a chronic sex offender he would know the drill of foot touching and hand gestures and would have denied everything even if it resulted in a physical taking into custody.
They know how to get around the cops. I also know cops and will bet that the cop said you won’t go to jail if you cooperated and cooperate means admit to everything I tell you you did. Listen to the tape. You can hear that underneath.
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