Disgraced ex-IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn's lawyer on Friday suggested that a political plot could have been behind sex assault charges that brought down his client.
Washington attorney William Taylor referred to an upcoming investigative article in the New York Review of Books as evidence that the then powerful French politician may have been derailed, just as he was preparing to run against French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
It quotes unnamed sources close to Strauss-Kahn saying that he had been warned in a text message the day of his arrest that an email he'd sent to his wife from the BlackBerry had been read at the offices of Sarkozy's UMP party in Paris.
The article also reports that a security camera caught the hotel's head engineer, Brian Yearwood, high-fiving another man and appearing to dance in celebration, near to the maid, as she awaited the arrival of police.