"If you don't like or care about your job, what's the big deal? I am so over it." -- Jessica Cutler
Jessica Louise Cutler (born May 18, 1978, in Monterey, California) is a blogger, an author, and former congressional staff assistant who was fired for detailing her active sexual life, including receiving money for having sex, in her blog.
"I always feel like I'm missing out on something, that someone is having more fun than I am, so I take measures to make sure that is impossible.""I always regarded people who want fame with a lot of suspicion. Unless you have a product to sell, I don't know why anyone would want to be famous. I can't imagine what need that would fill.""If you're still in a bar when the lights go on, you are a loser.""In real life, people are constantly saying one thing and doing another, but if you write your characters that way, the story becomes too hard to follow.""It's amazing to me that people have any interest in such a low-level sex scandal. If I were sleeping with a congressman, maybe, but I'm a nobody and the people I'm writing about are nobodies.""New York is where you go to catch a big fish.""Normal people have sex lives of their own to worry about.""There's no point in living in an alternate reality.""They'll totally hire me if I say I got fired from my job on the Hill because of a sex scandal."
In 2004 while a staff assistant for Senator Michael DeWine, Cutler published a short-lived blog called Washingtonienne describing her life in Washington, D.C. which included graphic details of her sex life.
Cutler justified receiving money from her lovers by saying "I'm sure I am not the only one who makes money on the side this way: How can anybody live on $25K/year??"
Her identity was revealed by the blog "Wonkette" in May 2004, which resulted in a scandal on Capitol Hill.
On May 21, 2004, Cutler was fired for "unacceptable use of Senate computers" by Senator DeWine. Media treatment of Cutler was harsh, the Philadelphia Daily News going so far as to label her a "DC slut". Cutler, though, has been relatively accepting of her notoriety:
In summer 2004, Playboy.com featured an interview and nude pictures of Cutler.
She wrote a novel based on her experiences and blog: The Washingtonienne: A Novel, selling it for a reported $300,000. A reviewer for the Washington Post wrote, ""The Washingtonienne" gives hints of being lively, funny and agreeably in-your-face." Judy Bachrach of the Weekly Standard wrote, "This is a novel of uncommon candor, humor, and perspicacity, and I loved every page of it."
Steinbuch lawsuit
In June 2005, Robert Steinbuch, who says that he is the passionate lover Cutler referred to as "RS" on her blog, filed a lawsuit against her, seeking over $75,000 in damages. Steinbuch's complaint, filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., describes the case as "a civil action for invasion of privacy for public revelation of private facts." She is represented by Atlanta lawyer, Matthew C. Billips, and D.C. lawyer, John R. Ates.
Steinbuch also filed a $20 million suit against her in Arkansas, where he lives. The lawsuit is being eyed closely by online privacy groups because it could establish if online bloggers are obligated to protect the privacy of those they name in their online diaries. On May 30, 2007, Cutler filed for bankruptcy to protect herself from the suit. The same article reported that cable television channel HBO and entertainment company Disney, who Steinbuch also sued, are working on a TV series about her story. The Arkansas case has been dismissed for forum non conveniens.
According to the New York Law Journal, Steinbuch was ordered to pay legal fees to Cutler's attorney Billips in June 2009. Billips has filed an affidavit requesting over $14,000 in fees and expenses.
Connection to Eliot Spitzer scandal
According to the New York Post, Cutler was a friend and business associate of the madam of an escort agency where Eliot Spitzer was a client.
After the Spitzer story broke, the Post published an article alleging that Cutler was "among the inner circle of a Manhattan call-girl ring that counted Eliot Spitzer as a client...," and that she "...appeared as a "model" on alleged madam Kristin "Billie" Davis' Web site."
"They are going to want to see me for questioning," she said, referring to the Manhattan District Attorney's Office.
Cutler was being sought last night by the NYPD, along with other women connected to the ring, law-enforcement sources said.
