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Last updated: 5:54 pm
March 29, 2009
Posted: 3:07 am
March 29, 2009
A day after word broke of a friend of the daughter of Vice President Joseph Biden attempting to hawk a video claiming to show Ashley Biden snorting cocaine, the friend was blown off by his lawyer.
Thomas Dunlap, a lawyer who had been representing man trying to hawk a video which purported to show the younger Biden at a party in Deleware, told The Post today he is no longer representing that person.
"I can't comment. I can't make any comment on anything about it," Dunlap said when asked what led to the legal split. Dunlap reportedly told RadarOnline.com that he was quitting because " he did not want to be involved due to circumstances surrounding the publicity of the matter," the Web site reported.
Asked by The Post if anyone had purchased the rights to the video, Dunlap said, "I have no idea."
PHOTOS: Ashley Biden
Yesterday, Dunlap and a man claiming to be a lawyer showed The Post about 90 seconds of a 43-minute tape, saying it was legally obtained and that Ashley was aware she was being filmed. The Post refused to pay for the video.
Ashley was aware she was being filmed. The Post refused to pay for the video.
The video, which the shooter initially hoped to sell for $2 million before scaling back his price to $400,000, shows a 20-something woman with light skin and long brown hair taking a red straw from her mouth, bending over a desk, inserting the straw into her nostril and snorting lines of white powder.
She then stands up and begins talking with other people in the room. A young man looks on from behind her, facing the camera. The lawyers said he was Ashley's boyfriend of a few years.
The camera follows the woman from a few feet away, focusing on her as she moves around the room. It appears not to be concealed. At one point she shouts, "Shut the f--- up!"
The woman appears to resemble Ashley Biden, 27, a social worker for a Delaware child-welfare agency and a visible presence during her father's campaign for the White House.
The dialogue is difficult to discern, but the woman makes repeated references to the drugs, said the lawyers, who said they viewed the tape about 15 times.
"At one point she pretty much complains that the line isn't big enough," said the second lawyer, who declined to identify himself. "And she talks about her dad."
Biden has been an outspoken crusader against drugs, coining the term "drug czar" in 1982 while campaigning for a more forceful "war on drugs."
The lawyers declined to name the person who shot the video, but said he knew Ashley well and had attended other parties with her at which there were illegal drugs.
The lawyers said the shooter used a camera with a hard-disc drive that he later destroyed, drilling into the device and tossing it into a lake.
The woman in the video acknowledges the camera in a way that makes it clear she knows she's being recorded, the lawyers said, waving at it during a part of the video not shown to The Post.
No one else in the video is seen using the drugs. The portion of the tape shown to The Post ends shortly after the woman's alleged ingestion.
The shooter claims that he previously tape-recorded Ashley at a party in August, but was unsuccessful in his attempts to sell that video, they said.
An American media company offered $250,000 for the footage and access to the person who shot the tape, according to the lawyers.
Another company, based overseas, offered $225,000, they said.
The unnamed lawyer hinted that his client had additional information that could embarrass the vice president's daughter.
"The higher the price, the more he'll reveal," said the lawyer.
The lawyers said the video shooter was afraid of being identified and prosecuted for his role in the alleged drug use.
"He's got a criminal-defense attorney," said Dunlap, who has offices in Virginia and the District of Columbia.
The other lawyer said Ashley didn't have Secret Service protection at the time of the party because she complained about agents blocking her driveway.
"She complained to her dad about it and he got rid of them," he said.
This isn't the first brush with scandal for Ashley, who was arrested in 2002 when she yelled at a cop trying to arrest her disorderly friend outside a Chicago club, according to published report.
She was charged with obstructing an officer, but the rap was later dropped after she apologized.
Ashley is the youngest of three siblings, and the only one born to the vice president and his second wife, Jill. Joe Biden's first wife, Neilia, and 13-month-old daughter, Naomi, died in a 1972 car crash. Her two half-brothers are Beau, 40, and Hunter, 39.
Phone messages left at the offices of Vice President Biden and Jill Biden, who were in Chile last night for meetings with South American leaders on economic issues, were not immediately returned.
Ashley also did not respond to messages left at her Delaware home
