Update to the Update: Lobbyist’s Son Apologizes to Senator Pryor for Girls Gone Wild Imbroglio

Click on the image to view the original letter.

Updated on April 26, 2012, at 10 AM and 3 PM.

On his own stationery, Chad Brownstein, implicated in the Senator Mark
Pryor/Joe Francis/Girls Gone Wild summer internship
debacle, today sent a letter to the senator to “apologize for
any embarrassment that I may have caused you.” In the letter,
which we received from Tamara Taylor of the public relations
firm Sitrick and Company and which is reprinted
in full here, Brownstein tells his version of events.

Updated on April 26, 2012, at 10:00 AM.

Girls Gone Wild creator Joe Francis, who says he bought a Senate summer internship in a charity auction, now claims the deal
was brokered by a lobbying firm with a DC office: Brownstein, Hyatt, Farber, Schreck. Also, he told
The Washingtonian this morning that the auction item, a
four-week summer internship in the office of Democratic Arkansas
senator Mark Pryor,
has been canceled and the money returned since controversy
around it began to spread earlier this week. “I can confirm that
the charity has told me that the Brownstein Hyatt Lobbying Firm
brokered the deal on behalf of Senator Mark Pryor to sell
the internship,” Francis wrote in an e-mail today. “They also
confirmed that the senator and his office were fully aware of
everything.”

The charity in question is the Wilshire Boulevard
Temple. Its leader, Rabbi Steve Leder, said in an e-mail, “Wilshire
Boulevard
Temple has learned that a private party organized to benefit
the Temple’s early childhood centers included an auction item
bid for by Mr. Francis. We have learned that the party’s
organizers returned the money and canceled the item. We agree with
that decision.”

When news broke of Francis winning the auction–and his intention to award it to a young woman as part of a Girls Gone Wild
promotion–Pryor’s office called the auction item a “hoax” and said the senator had called in the FBI to investigate.

Quoting a blogger, the
Arkansas Times indicated that Chad Brownstein, son of
Brownstein, Hyatt partner Norman Brownstein, knew Pryor. According to
OpenSecrets.org,
Chad Brownstein of Beverly Hills has twice contributed money to
Mark Pryor’s election campaigns. A 2008 Wilshire Boulevard
Temple newsletter reported that Pryor visited their location
with Chad Brownstein, a congregant. “With Rabbi Steve Leder guiding
him on a personal tour of the sanctuary, Senator Pryor learned
the fascinating history of our Temple and our clergy.”

Efforts to reach both Chad and Norman Brownstein Thursday morning by e-mail and telephone were not immediately successful;
we will update this post if and when we receive a response.

The earlier story is below:

Screen shot of Francis’ winning bid. Courtesy of Francis.

Depending on whether you consult Girls Gone Wild creator
Joe Francis, or the office of Arkansas senator
Mark Pryor, or a website that claims to be the
eBay of charitable auctions, Francis either did or did not buy a
charitable auction item
that grants the recipient a summer internship in Pryor’s
office. Pryor has called in the FBI. Regardless, Francis has posted
the internship as part of the prize for the winner of his
contest and reality TV series
The Search for the Hottest Girl in America. He says he plans to announce the winner next week and have her on the way to Washington this summer, which he calls “Mr.
Pryor’s criteria.”

Francis says he bought the internship as an auction
item through an “intermediary who is close to the senator. It was
offered
to a select group of people.” He says he bought it to benefit a
charity, the name of which he won’t mention because, he says,
“They are upset about the media firestorm. No good deed goes
unpunished.” He says, though, that since buying the item he has
talked to the intermediary and confirmed it “is all legit. I
own it. I bought it.”

The Girls Gone Wild website states: “After making a
charitable donation during a private auction this past weekend
benefiting
a Los Angeles-based temple, Francis purchased a
once-in-a-lifetime four-week internship on Capitol Hill working for a
United
States senator and added it to the prize package for this
season’s lucky winner.”

At the website Bidding for Good, where the item was listed with a value of $15,000,
Kaija Kurstin said the winner paid $2,500 for
the item. She said it had come to Bidding For Good through the Wilshire
Boulevard Temple
in Los Angeles on behalf of the Reggio Emilia Philosophy Child
Learning Center. Francis would neither confirm nor deny these
claims. We called the temple, but no one we talked to was
familiar with the controversy, nor did anyone call us back.

Francis forwarded us an e-mail from Bidding for Good
that said “Winning Bid Alert,” and “You’re the winner bidder on U.S.
Senator Internship–Mark Pryor (D–Arkansas). He said he redacted
the parts of the e-mail that named the lobbyist and the charity.

Pryor’s communications director,
Lisa Ackerman, says her boss has contacted the
FBI because “we believe it’s a crime to impersonate a US senator.” In a
phone interview,
she said, “The website used a Senate seal without
authorization. We do have summer interns. It’s a five-week internship.
We
require the interns be sophomores. We don’t sell it or auction
it off.”

Earlier, Pryor’s office released a statement calling Francis’s claims a “hoax.”

“I’ve done nothing wrong,” says Francis, whose Girls
Gone Wild franchise is based, principally, on college girls baring their
breasts. “I thought we were helping out a charity, doing a good
thing for women and charity. We’ve been coordinating 100 percent
with Pryor’s office through the charity. So it is 100 percent
legitimate.”

Francis, a Democrat, said he bought the auction item
last week and paid for it by check. And if it turns out to be bogus,
or, if real, revoked by Pryor? “If he revoked it, he would be
discriminatory. I’m not the one going to Washington. A lucky
young woman who is aspiring to be in politics is the one going
there. They should just let it ride.”

Carol Ross Joynt