As reported by Jed Lewison on the front page Politico reports that Mark Sanford booked a ten day tango to Argentina on the 10th of June. This of course makes his statement during his press conference yesterday that it was a spur of the moment decision to go to Argentina just another lie, and makes all those people who had sympathy for him then look like even bigger fools, because they were still being lied to then.
But that is not all. Most surprisingly, no one has picked on something else, even though Politico explicitly mentions it:
On or around the day his wife asked him to move out, South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford booked a ten-day trip to Buenos Aires
Yesterday, the 24th, Jenny Sanford released a statement saying:
We reached a point where I felt it was important to look my sons in the eyes and maintain my dignity, self-respect, and my basic sense of right and wrong. I therefore asked my husband to leave two weeks ago.
That indeed confirms the date, as 2 weeks before the 24th is the 10th.
But is doesn't explain the exact order of the trip booking and the request to leave, the question that no one has asked so far. These two events can't be unrelated.
Did Mark Sanford book the ten day tango because he got kicked out by his wife and he needed some distraction, or did Jenny Sanford find out about the trip and was that the point where she needed to maintain her dignity and self-respect and kicked her lying sack-of-shit husband to the kerb? Was it then when she realized that the five months she had spent trying to repair her marriage were wasted?
EDIT:
Look, this diary is not about what happened between Mark and Jenny Sanford. It is about the possibility that people bloody well knew where governor Sanford was. Even if Jenny Sanford didn't find out about his trip beforehand (as I said, it is highly likely that the booking of the trip and the separation are connected, just in which order is not something we can determine), she must have had a strong suspicion that Mark had gone to see his mistress.
And Jenny is not just a stay-at-home-mom. She was the campaign manager for all three of Mark congressional campaigns and both his gubernatorial campaigns. As such, she must have numerous contacts of her own within the South Carolina GOP, people who would have asked her for information about her husband's whereabouts that she didn't want to make public.
What has been presented by Sanford's staff so far is that no one had a clue where he was. From what we know and can deduce it seems like there is a strong likelyhood that people were aware that he was not in the country, and not in a position to return at short notice in case of an emergency. That compounded Mark Sanford's original irresponsibility by leaving the state without handing over responsibilities.