The fired House staffer who is accusing the Benghazi select committee of running an anti-Clinton witch-hunt also moonlights as a professional storyteller around the Washington, D.C., metro area.
Maj. Bradley Podliska, who is suing the committee after getting axed in June, claims the panel is running a "partisan" probe against Clinton. The committee’s chairman, Rep. Trey Gowdy (R., S.C.), called Podliska’s allegations "sensationalist and fabulist" on Sunday. The committee said that Podliska was fired after mishandling classified information and using resources for an unrelated PowerPoint project.
The former staffer has some experience with storytelling. Podliska performed last year with the live Virginia-based storytelling group "Better Said Than Done," where he recounted a terrible blind date he went on as part of the Washington Post’s "DateLab" feature in 2011.
His story started out mild and self-deprecating, but he soon launched into a tirade of insults against the woman.
According to Podliska, his date was a drunken disaster who "liked to drink like a fish" and told him to "quit the chit-chat, I’m here to drink on the Washington Post’s dime" when he attempted polite conversation.
By the end of the night, Podliska said, the woman "was looking as if she had run 300 miles in a tornado, while jumping on a trampoline, all while upside down, underwater. In other words, she was two sheets to the wind."
He also claimed the "blindly drunk female" bad-mouthed him in the Washington Post article after their date, calling him a "Neanderthal" for attempting to walk her to the train.
"Imagine my surprise when I read in the Washington Post that my date had called me a Neanderthal for insisting on walking her to Metro, as if there was nothing wrong with a blindly drunk female roaming the dark streets of Washington, D.C., at one in the morning," said Podliska.
The story is at odds with the Washington Post article from 2011, in which Podliska said he tried to set up a second rendezvous with the woman but was shot down.
"I was interested in her as a person, but like I said, after that 150 milliseconds, it takes six or seven significant steps to turn that first impression," said Podliska. "So I was open-minded; I was like, maybe something will change my mind here, but that just never occurred. I [said]: ‘I really enjoyed your company, and I’d like to see you again,’ and she said, ‘We’ll see how it goes.’ But we didn’t have each other’s phone numbers, there’s no way to get in touch again. So it was clearly a throwaway line."
The woman also did not call Podliska a "Neanderthal" in the article for walking her to the Metro. She told the Post that it "was nice; he wanted to make sure I got there safely."
But the woman did say the date was "awkward" and that she was "used to more charm and repartee."
"You never feel nice when someone asks you for your contact information and you say you’d rather not," she told the Post. "I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, but I wasn’t really interested in staying in touch. I would say at best, [the date] was a 2. It just wasn’t a real charming date."
Podliska claimed during his storytelling performance that he made up all the nice things he said about his date in the Post article.
"Now I, on the other hand, sung my date’s praises to the reporter when I got interviewed about the date: my date was beautiful, she was smart, she was kind, she was a lot of fun." said Podliska. "And all of that was true if you were a Hollywood publicist, or drunk, and had never actually met my date."