The Wrong ‘Yaneisi Fernandez’? Stupid Media Trick Fails to Clear Menendez
Posted on | February 5, 2013 | 13 Comments
Univision interviews wholesome non-prostitute Yaneisi Fernandez
Well, isn’t this special? “Fernandez” isn’t exactly a rare name in Latin America, and “Yaneisi” is more common that you might have suspected, so when a Univision TV crew barged in on a 21-year-old woman named Yaneisi Fernandez, who was horrified by the accusation of being a call girl who got paid to party down with an American politician — well, what part of “mistaken identity” is so hard for you to understand?
E-mails provided by tipster Peter Williams to the Daily Caller describe a Dominican woman, Yaneisi Fernandez, who was allegedly involved in the underage prostitution scandal now surrounding New Jersey senator Robert Menendez. Univision tracked down a woman by the name of Yaneisi Fernandez at her home in the Dominican Republic; she says she is not a prostitute and has never met Menendez. You can watch the segment, which aired in Spanish, here. The Daily Caller, however, claims the network interviewed the wrong Yaneisi Fernandez, noting that the e-mails in question “never mention whether Fernandez lives in the Dominican Republic” — some of the women mentioned claimed to live in Miami — and that their reporters found twelve separate American directory listings for women by the name of Yaneisi Fernandez.
Look, if I told you that circa 1978 I dated a freckle-faced girl named Peggy with C-cups who could suck the chrome off a trailer hitch, there would probably be enough women who fit the description that you’d never be able to find her. If I told you that I also dated her sister Kathy, that might narrow things down a bit, but I digress . . .
Beyond such hypothetical speculation, this “Yaneisi Fernandez” escapade reminds me of when Brian Ross of ABC News mistakenly identified a Colorado Tea Party activist named “James Holmes” as the Aurora theater massacre gunman of the same name.
Oops!
Evidently, the clever folks at Univision got the absurdly illogical idea that if they could find one young woman named “Yaneisi Fernandez” in the Dominican Republic who had not been paid to have sex with Robert Menendez, then this would prove that Robert Menendez never banged any hookers in the Dominican Republic. And this was instantly trumpeted in major media headlines as having proven just that:
Woman denies being a prostitute, meeting Menendez
– CNN
Woman denies knowing Menendez
– Politico
The effect of such headlines was to suggest that Menendez had been exonerated — the allegations were just a bunch of right-wing “smears,” as he said — and in all such situations, it is my habit to presume that the intent was the same as the effect. The liberal media very much want this ugly sex scandal to go away, and I’ve got a cynical hunch that the senator’s well-connected daughter Alicia Mendendez is helping coordinate the MSM communications pushback, so . . .
Hey, what’s this story about Alicia Menendez? And what’s this latest headline from the New York Times?
Port Deal Pushed by Menendez Could
Benefit Former Aide, Not Just a Major Donor
Why is the Menendez media pushback operation failing? Maybe it has something to with the fact that New Jersey is full of ambitious Democrats who might benefit from the senator’s downfall. And who would move up as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee if Menendez were to get hounded out of office?
So there are Democrats with personal motives to take out Menendez, and maybe there are some Florida politicians in both parties who think they might benefit from exposing the connection between Dr. Salomon Melgen and certain eminent Republicans.
Damned complicated mess, this story. More complicated than trying to date two sisters at the same time. Hypothetically, that is.

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