The case against Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) has gone up like a little puff of smoke.

A Dominican lawyer paid three women to falsely claim on camera last year that they had sex with U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez, police said Monday.

The women told police that attorney Melanio Figueroa paid them each between $300 and $425 to record interviews in October, National Police spokesman Gen. Máximo Báez Aybar said at a news conference.

Two of those interviews might have been published by conservative news website The Daily Caller just before the November elections. The women, whose faces were blurred out to conceal their identity, claimed to have been paid as escorts for sex with a man named “Bob.”

The police announcement provides the strongest evidence yet contradicting accusations that Menendez flew to the Dominican Republic for sex parties in the vacation home of political benefactor and prominent Florida eye doctor Salomón Melgen.

The accusations along with other claims that later surfaced helped enmesh Menendez and Melgen in scandal.

The original story was breathlessly reported by Tucker Carlson’s blog, sure that they had come across the scoop of the century.  When one of the women recanted her story, Mr. Carlson’s mouthpiece said that she was not the source of the story, so they stood by it.  Now that it appears the whole thing was a scam, we can all anticipate a retraction and humble apology from the bow-tied poor man’s Mencken… right after we see donkeys fly.

PS: Mr. Menendez is not out of the woods; he’s still under investigation by a grand jury.  But at least this bit of creative writing on behalf of the orcosphere is a nothingburger.