Richard Mellon Scaife, infamous billionaire, has used his inheritance to build much of the right-wing's media and ideological infrastructure over the past forty years. His Arkansas Project attempted to take down the Clintons with the Whitewater investigation and, later, impeachment. His Pittsburgh Tribune-Review remains an important cog in the Right-Wing Noise Machine. He has made smearing Democrats a hobby for most of his adult life.
And now he is getting a messy, bitter, public divorce. We cannot let such personal humiliation go unnoticed, not when it comes to Richard Mellon Scaife. Details after the jump.
We had known for a while that Scaife's marriage to his second wife Ritchie was on the rocks. News that he had her arrested for trespassing at his Shadyside house broke in the Post-Gazette (Pittsburgh's main daily) after Christmas 2005. The famously private man who made a point to lie and distort the private lives of public servants now found some of his dirty laundry aired in public. Much more is coming to light in the ensuing divorce proceedings. David Segal in the Washington Post gleefully runs down the details, including financial irresponsibility, dog-snatching, an accused affair with a prostitute, criminal charges...and no prenup.
When Scaife married Ritchie, despite already being divorced once and being an anti-social alcoholic ass, he did not think to secure his $1.3 billion fortune with a prenuptual agreement. Now he is paying her $725,000 per month in alimony, an amount that Scaife' lawyers described as "an amount so large that just the income from it, invested at 5 percent, is greater each year than the salary of the President of the United States."
So Scaife's not smart with his money. Bankrolling the Heritage Foundation is evidence of that. But his lack of judgment doesn't end there. The Post-Gazette story on Ritchie's arrest did not mention that she had good cause to be upset with her husband. Segal writes:
At some point in late 2005, Ritchie started having suspicions about her husband and hired a private investigator named Keith Scannell, a specialist in high-end surveillance for insurance companies. In December of that year, Scannell followed Richard Scaife to nearby North Huntingdon, home of Doug's Motel, a place where the TVs are bolted to the furniture and rooms can be rented in three-hour increments, for $28....There, according to Scannell, Scaife spent a few hours with Tammy Sue Vasco.
Why a billionaire would shack up at Doug's Motel, of all places, is a mystery. Ditto his choice of companions. Vasco is a tall, blond 43-year-old mother who in 1993 was busted in a sting operation after showing up at a Sheraton hotel and offering to have sex with an undercover cop for $225, the Post-Gazette reported....
A few days after Scannell reported the Doug's Motel rendezvous to Ritchie Scaife, she noticed Vasco's Jeep in the driveway of his mansion at Westminster Place. Gaping through a window, according to court papers filed by her lawyers, she spotted Vasco. Then the trouble started.
Private investigator Scannell, commenting on what became a much-discussed local news story, put it this way: "Mrs. Scaife acted as any loving wife would upon finding out just days earlier that her husband had a confirmed meeting, for several hours, at a $40 motel with a woman previously arrested for prostitution."
Police would later say that Ritchie Scaife began pounding on doors and windows and refused to leave, which is why she was promptly arrested for "defiant trespass." She was handcuffed and driven downtown to the Allegheny County Jail -- near the Liberty Bridge, at 950 Second Ave. -- where a woman accustomed to traveling with a personal hairdresser spent the night in what her lawyers later called a "grim" holding cell.
The trespassing charge was eventually dismissed, but as Ritchie Scaife's lawyer stated in a divorce filing, "The marriage was over!"
And the litigation had begun, with fighting over various possessions, kitchenware and the dog. (I've edited the diary to omit the dog story and reduce the number of quoted paragraphs, but it's worth reading to see just how acrimonious this divorce has become.)
Segal goes on to detail more conflicts between Ritchie and Richard over the course of 2006, but focuses on the money. This is the one part of the case valuable not just for the humilation it brings to Scaife, but also for informing the public about his fortune.
The filings in this case have unveiled a scrumptious buffet of new information about Richard Scaife's riches -- where they've come from and where they've gone. Until a few weeks ago, these documents were under seal, by consent of both parties. Then the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette discovered that someone in Allegheny County's prothonotary's office had mistakenly, and briefly, posted filings in the case on a part of its Web site that is publicly accessible.
Now we know that Scaife is beneficiary of nine different trusts, including one called the "1935 Trust," with an approximate value of $210 million, and another called "The Revocable Trust," valued at $655 million. Altogether, these gushers are worth about $1.4 billion.
And that's after a lot of money's gone down the toilet. The Tribune-Review has a high profile around Pittsburgh, though nobody I knew bought it in all the years I lived there. My observations had a basis in reality.
We learned, too, that the Tribune-Review has been a gurgling sinkhole from Day One; Scaife's lawyers say their client has pumped as much as $312 million into it over the years. And he's going to have to keep on pumping. The Tribune-Review's CEO has predicted an annual shortfall of $20 million for years to come.
These figures matter in the divorce because Scaife is arguing that the funds he forwards to the Tribune-Review should be deducted from his aggregate income, putting his annual haul closer to $17 million a year, a long way from the $45 million a year cited by Ritchie's lawyers. If true, that would of course reduce the monthly alimony check he could owe his wife once there's a permanent settlement.
In effect, the newspaper is a charity case -- if you can call a right-wing smear rag worthy of charity. (Richard does.)
In short, we have financial irresponsibility, an affair with a prostitute, a canine custody battle, admissions that Scaife's newspaper is a bust, and generally unpleasant behavior. And more details may yet emerge.
Now we know why Scaife has been so reclusive all these years. Who would want such details known about your life? Normally I wouldn't be interested in publicizing a person's misfortune, but Scaife is different. For the damage he has done both to our political process and to the lives of individuals whose politics he found disagreeable, he deserves all the embarrassment his divorce may earn him. I can only hope the eventual settlement drains his ability to fund his pet projects...and that his dog goes to a nicer person.