Fine, Here Is Your Not Entirely Exculpatory Vid Of Alan Grayson's Wife Whaling On Him With A Claw Hammer

Look, we are also VERY SAD when a prominent Dem does -- or is accused of doing -- something wrong, but we have to write about it, you know, we really do. And damn, we would really love it if the domestic violence accusation against Alan Grayson turned out to be nothing but overheated vapor in an ugly divorce. Lord knows there's never a shortage of false or exaggerated claims in custody disputes -- then again, there's never a shortage of actual abuse, either.

So very many of you tipped and emailed and tweetered us this new development:  a cell phone video of part of Saturday's confrontation between Alan Grayson and his wife Lolita, taken by Grayson aide Juan Lopez, who Grayson says came along in case there was trouble. Alan Grayson's lawyer Mark NeJame says the video shows Lolita Grayson delivering a "right uppercut" to the congressman's head; we'd call it a slap or maybe a push, but OK. After the jump, we shall look more closely at the video and get all Kevin-Costner Zapruder Film-y on it. Note how Mr. Grayson steps back, and to the...um, to the right.

In addition to the cellphone video, NeJame also released a statement from the couple's 19-year-old daughter, Skye, which said

"At no time did my father hit or push my mother ... In fact, my father backed away from my mother when she became physically aggressive."

So here is the video, as edited by Alan Grayson's legal team (according to them, 58 seconds from the beginning were snipped to remove images of the Graysons' kids, which we are perfectly OK with unless they fibbed about that of course -- we'll assume they're not slimy or dumb enough to alter or remove something that might incriminate their client, because you know the whole thing, with sound, will at least be seen by a judge).

And fair enough, we don't see Alan pushing Lolita, just her yelling at and then slap/pushing him (nah, let's just say she's pushing his face -- she could use a grapefruit, maybe) before going though the door.

But you also don't have to be the Rodney King jury to wonder what's being missed with the lack of sound and the several seconds where Lopez has the phone camera pointing in the wrong direction, still focused on the van. Three or four seconds is enough time for Alan to have shoved Lolita, too, so this video is not the magic proof that nothing happened, either.

This isn't to say we think Grayson did do something nasty on the front porch, just that we don't have a complete picture of the encounter. Things are looking better for Alan Grayson than they did yesterday, but that's mostly due to the statement from the Graysons' daughter, and not this video, which proves us exactly nada.

[ Orlando Sentinel ]