The woman who calls herself, among many other names, Wendy Cortez, is a former employee of the famous “Canal Street Madam” who has acknowledged that Louisiana Sen. David Vitter was a client at her establishment more than once in the 90s. Cortez outed Vitter yesterday, saying that she was “perturbed that he portrayed himself as a politician who would bring moral authority to his office when he was using her services on the side.”
It turns out that Cortez is the same woman allegedly linked with Vitter when he ran for the Senate in 2004. At the time, Vitter said that the accusation was “absolutely and completely untrue,” and part of “crass Louisiana politics.” He continues to deny any association with Cortez, and his attorney continues to point out that Vitter was not part of the federal investigation that closed the New Orleans establishment in 2001, and that his name was never found in any records by either the lead defense attorney or the U.S. attorney during the investigation.
A former romantic partner of Cortez’s has told the New Orleans Times-Picayune that he believes Vitter was not only a client of Cortez’s, but that they also had a romantic involvement of some kind. He describes some photographs of the two of them together, one of which shows a woman with her hand on Vitter’s crotch. However, Canal Street Madam Jeanette Maier says the woman in the photos is not the woman whom she knew as Wendy Cortez.
Cortez has no known arrests for prostitution, but she does have an arrest record for forgery, parole violation, fleeing from justice, and fraudulent use of credit cards.
