Dominque Strauss-Kahn, the former head of the International Monetary Fund who was widely viewed as a likely contender for the French presidency, faced sexual assault allegations by a chambermaid who says he attacked her in May. The maid, an immigrant from  Guinea, speaks a West African dialect called Fulani. The maid spoke Fulani to a mysterious West African friend who was incarcerated someplace in Arizona for drug charges, and the call was recorded, and this helped shatter  her credibility. (She also lied on her income tax form and her political asylum application, according to press reports.)  The reason the taped phone conversation shattered the maid’s cred,  at least in the eyes of newspaper reporters who talked to prosecutors,  is  that the maid said something to the effect of “Don’t worry I know what I am doing” and the inference was that she was going to scam DSK, who is enormously rich.

After word of the taped conversation got out, DSK, who on home arrest in cushy quarters in New York, was released. (He can’t leave the USA, though.) Prosecutors still haven’t decided whether they will pursue the case.

In other words, that phone call with the guy in Arizona was important.

I’m telling you all this so you’ll know why media outlets all over the USA were scrambling to get in touch with the mysterious West African friend, to get his side of the story. The problem, though, was that no one knew his name, or where he was incarcerated.

That is, until The Daily Beast found him. His name is Amara Tarawally, and he is an unauthorized immigrant from Sierra Leone, and in an exclusive interview with me, he claims  he’s the maid’s fiance. He was arrested in a pot bust in Chandler, Arizona, about a year ago. After serving time in jail, he was transferred to a detention center in Eloy, Arizona, pending a hearing on his immigration status.  But since his immigration case is based in New York, the case hasn’t been transferred out to Arizona yet and he’s in limbo. He told me even Sierra Leone would be better than detention because he’s been in the dark for so long, and feels cut off from the world. He also told me the phone call was taken completely out of context, that the maid is a beautiful woman who would never lie, and that he learned English from watching CNN, The Price is Right, and Deal or No Deal.

You can read the story here.

And here is an NBC interview I gave earlier today.

What do you think?

Did DSK assault the maid?

And how come just about every good news story has an Arizona connection?

The other day, I wrote about Arizona’s  polygamists and it got me to thinking about how undocumented immigrants aren’t the only  underdogs in the Grand Canyon state.

So-called “sister wives”  in some Arizona polygamist enclaves are  married off as teens to old men and then reassigned to other old men, all for the glory of God and, critics say, the political well being of whoever happens to be prophet at the time. The women go along with the degradation because they choose to believe it is their only route to eternal salvation.

Sister wives are American citizens. They could enjoy all sorts of rights and liberties if they wanted them.

But they don’t.

Undocumented immigrants, on the other hand, aren’t American citizens. In Arizona, they  can’t legally drive or work. College is out of the question for most, because they’re barred from paying in-state tuition, even though many undocumented kids have  lived here for most of their lives. They pay taxes, but enjoy few of the benefits afforded to taxpayers. You’d think these people would want to go back to their homelands after they get arrested for jaywalking or working or having broken tail lights, but many  choose to spend the equivalent of a whole year’s salary  to hire a lawyer to fight  deportation. They don’t want to leave, despite the hardships.

So who has the most American spirit?

The sister wives?

Or the undocumented immigrants?