More Trickles Out About The Paul Pelosi DUI

In terms of overall deliciousness, few recent events can match the DUI arrest of Paul Pelosi, the Speaker's husband, over the Memorial Day weekend in Napa, CA. My wife and I follow it with special interest, because we frequently visit there, and when we do, we regularly pass the site.

Information about the circumstances has been tightly controlled. Thanks to near-universal use of police body and dash cameras, we may assume footage exists of the arrest and Pelosi's field sobriety test, and given the popularity of TV shows that use such footage, it's not hard to imagine what it was like even if we can't see the actual episode. This is part of the deliciousness behind the whole story.

But if the political establishment ever thought they'd be able to keep a lid on things, they're of course mistaken. The arrest and subsequent court proceedings are public records, and eventually everything will come out. The district attorney issued charges this past week, which inevitably brought out more details of the incident:

He was charged with driving under the influence causing injury and driving with a blood-alcohol level of .08 percent or over.

The DA is charging those two as misdemeanors, even though in California they’re “wobblers” and can be charged as either misdemeanors or felonies, based on the evidence and the District Attorney’s discretion. They note that the decision was based on the injury and is consistent with the way they normally charge things. Yes, it’s normal that they judge by the seriousness of the injury. So either that’s an indication that a) there was an injury, but it wasn’t serious or b) there’s a more serious injury and he’s getting a break. Now, one of the problems in this case has been that they haven’t been releasing all the information. There hasn’t been a police report released of the accident and the arrest. Prior news reports had not indicated any injury; now we’re suddenly told that there was injury. So what’s the nature of the injury? We don’t know.

His blood-alcohol level wasn’t tested until more than two hours after the collision, at 12:32 a.m. The crash was at 10:17 p.m. So if it was .082 at that time, it was higher at the time of the accident.

Other accounts note that he wan't booked until 4:13 AM the following morning, which raises inevitable questions about the delay. It's hard not to think that once Paul came to his senses, he was on the phone to Nancy and her handlers, with a great deal of back-and-forth at the federal, state, and county level. In any case,

The Pelosis have hired some PR folk to handle this matter, including, apparently, SF politico Lee Houskeeper, and Napa-based "crisis manager" Larry Kamer. One of their first orders of business was refuting press reports that Paul Pelosi was arrested for a similar driving incident four years ago — that was apparently a different person named Paul Pelosi?

Along with the new information that the Jeep driver who hit Pelosi's Porsche was injured in the collision, there's the intriguing question of whether there was a witness to the crash. According to the RedState link above,

Fox’s Jesse Watters let loose on “Paulie P” (as he terms him) on his show after the charges were announced, including revelations from a new explosive New York Times story.

. . . As Watters says, where did the witness come from? On the side of the road in rural Napa County late at night? Watters speculates the person was in the car. We don’t know whether or not they were, though Watters has spoken to a member of the Fire Department who says they know the answer but they’re being pressured by the District Attorney’s office to keep quiet.

Several questions come up in my mind. Fire Department? That suggests that not only was there an injury, but paramedics must have been on scene. Just how many were injured if someone else was in Pelosi's car? And just who might that have been? I suspect it was an attractive female companion of the Speaker's husband. Lots to keep quiet here.

I would guess there's a great deal of baksheesh being handed around to all parties, Pelosi handlers promising it'll all be taken care of, don't worry about a thing. Well, that'd better be the case.