Louis Lanzano / AP Photo
A taped conversation portraying the maid accusing Dominique Strauss-Kahn of sexual assault as an opportunist may not have been as incriminating as it was first reported to be. After a lengthy meeting with prosecutors, Nafissatou Diallo's lawyer told reporters that media accounts of Diallo's conversation with an imprisoned man were false. The New York Times had reported, citing anonymous law-enforcement officials, that Diallo was taped saying, “Don't worry, this guy has a lot of money. I know what I'm doing.” But according to Diallo's lawyer, she made these two statements at two different points. In her first conversation, she said only that “someone tried to rape me, and that he's a powerful, big man.” In a subsequent conversation, she said, “I know what to do,” explaining that she planned to hire a lawyer and would be all right. "Her primary focus was on what happened to her, how she was coping with the fact that she had almost been raped," said Diallo's lawyer.