Holy smoke Batman. You don’t tug on Superman’s cape; you don’t spit into the wind. And you don’t mess around with Jen.
AP’s Bruce Smith has, through Yahoo News, put up an interview with Jenny Sanford; and it is a doozy. Do go read the entire piece, it is totally deserving. Many key questions are addressed, and Jenny Sanford puts on a tour de force.
How did Jenny find out about her husband’s affair:
Sanford said she discovered her husband’s affair early this year after coming across a copy of a letter to the mistress in one of his files in the official governor’s mansion. He had asked her to find some financial information, she said, not an unusual request considering her heavy involvement in his career.
Fascinating, and it means Jenny was not the one who forwarded the salacious Romeo/Juliet emails to The State newspaper, because The State received them in December of 2008. I have a feeling that eliminates her father too, and militates in favor of someone in the South Carolina state government, probably around the Governor’s office.**
What does Jenny think of Mark having gone to Argentina to see Maria?
That he had dared to go to Argentina to see the other woman left her stunned. "He was told in no uncertain terms not to see her," she said in a strong, steady voice.
Heh, well maybe not that stunned because:
…her husband repeatedly asked permission to visit his lover in the months after she discovered his affair.
Oh. My. That’s gonna leave a mark. It is not the kind of thing you put out on the record unless you are leaving a serious marker to own the narrative, and boy is Jenny Sanford doing that. And Jenny is not blind to anything going on here either; she has a grip.
On her philandering husband’s pelotas.
Think Jenny has any illusions about the extended stroll Mark just took through Buenos Aires? Nuh uh. Asked whether she thinks he has ended the tryst with Maria:
"I guess that’s what we will have to see. I believe he has," she said. "But he was down there for five days. I saw him yesterday and he is not staying here. We’ll just see what kind of spirit of reconciliation he has himself."
As Marcy emailed a bit ago:
The State had reported yesterday that he was at the Island with the family.
I guess that didn’t last long. And I guess she’s got the same doubts we do that a man books a ten day trip to Argentina to break up.
No kidding. Hey King David Sanford, I don’t think you are exactly married to Bathsheba. What, on the other hand, does the once and future Skill Power Tools heiress have to say for her efforts in the case at bar?
"You would think that a father who didn’t have contact with his children, if he wanted those children, he would toe the line a little bit," she said.
and
"I’ve done everything in my power possibly to keep him from going to see her and to really make sure she was off the table, including asking him to leave."
and
"Parenting is the most important job there is and what Mark has done has added a serious weight to that job," she said.
Well okay then; guess that about sums it up. There are other nice little facts of the story, such as the State of South Carolina never had any intention or plan to have an Argentina leg for the South American trade development junket. The one in 2008 which Romeo Sanford created on his own desire.
What a delicious passion play we have brewing in the Palmetto State.
I wonder what kind of battery of lawyers the heiress to the SkilSaw fortune has? Man, if Mark Sanford was smart, he would pack his bags, write out his resignation and head for the pampas of Argentina. Tonight. There is nothing left for him now. Jenny Sanford owns him. Lock, stock and steely cold chain around the cajones. And don’t forget, even according to Mark Sanford, it was Jenny’s skills and money that won him every election in the first place.
South Carolina elected the wrong Sanford Governor; it should have been Jenny.
**UPDATE: Per FrankProbst in comments, the New York Times has a timely new story out on the source of the juicy emails suppied to Columbia South Carolina’s newspaper The State:
The mystery of who revealed Gov. Mark Sanford’s e-mail messages may finally be solved. A business associate of Mr. Sanford’s Argentine mistress said Friday that private messages between the two lovers had been sent anonymously to a South Carolina newspaper last December by an Argentine man the mistress had briefly dated.
The associate, who asked not to be identified, is a Buenos Aires television executive involved in hiring the woman, whom he identified as María Belén Chapur, a producer at the television network America from 2001 to 2002.
Last December, the executive said, Ms. Chapur was dating a young Argentine a few months after her affair with Mr. Sanford began. The man happened to see the e-mail messages being exchanged between the governor and Ms. Chapur, said the executive — who said he had direct knowledge of the situation — and hacked into her e-mail account to see the rest.
Infuriated, the man sent the messages to The State, the newspaper in South Carolina’s capital, Columbia.
Wow. This just keeps getting better and better. It was Maria’s young cougar bait that ratted her and Sanford out to the press. Booyah.