“I want justice. I want him to go to jail,” Nafissatou Diallo told ABC’s Robin Roberts. “I want him to know that there is some places you cannot use your money, you cannot use your power when you do something like this.”
The guts of the Big Get aired Monday on “Nightline,” but a chunk of the chat with Roberts aired Monday morning during “GMA.”
That teaser for Monday night’s interview included a bit in which Diallo reenacted moments of the alleged assault:
“I turned my head. He comes to me and grab my breasts. I said, ‘Stop! Stop! I don’t want to lose my job!’ ”
The Diallo interview comes less than a month after ABC News reported that the case might be crumbling after Manhattan district attorney investigators uncovered “significant issues” with Diallo’s account of what happened in that hotel room.
Those issues included the discovery that she had a phone conversation with an incarcerated man within a day of her encounter with the IMF chief, in which she discussed the possible financial upside of pursuing charges against him, ABC News reported.
“The holes in the credibility of the housekeeper led prosecutors to doubt much of what the accuser has told them about the circumstances of the case or about herself, ABC News has confirmed,” the network reported in late June.
Those holes also include “possible links to criminal activities, including drug dealing and money laundering.”
On Monday, ABC News reported that it asked Diallo about the instances that caused prosecutors to “reassess the strength of the case,” and said that Diallo acknowledged “mistakes” but insisted she was telling the truth about Strauss-Kahn.
“God is my witness I’m telling the truth. From my heart. God knows that. And he knows that,” she was seen telling Roberts.
She insisted that when she learned who Strauss-Kahn was, her first thought was that she would be killed:
“And then they say he’s going to be the next president of France. And I say, ‘Oh, my God!’ And I was crying. I said, ‘They’re gonna kill me!’ ”
In a statement, Strauss-Kahn’s defense attorneys called Diallo’s interview an “unseemly circus,” ABC News reported Monday.
“Its obvious purpose is to inflame public opinion against a defendant in a pending criminal case,” William Taylor and Benjamin Brafman wrote in a statement, as reported by ABC News.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office, meanwhile, declined to give ABC News a comment about its Big Get. Spokeswoman Erin Duggan said to the news organization, “This is a pending criminal case. . . . To protect the integrity of the criminal justice system, the rights of the victim and the rights of the accused, we will not discuss the facts or evidence in what remains an ongoing investigation.”
