Flynt Shines Again in the Media Spotlight

The House was quarreling into the Washington night as Larry Flynt wheeled past a phalanx of reporters crowded into his Beverly Hills office Friday afternoon.

Parking his wheelchair behind a desk topped with his Hustler and Barely Legal magazines, the self-financed investigator of indiscretion grinned with delight at the large turnout.

“I see that sex does sell,” he said, perhaps summing up both the secret to his success and the motive for his $1 million cash-for-confessions scheme that reportedly helped prompt House Speaker-elect Bob Livingston to admit to adultery this week.

Flynt called the news conference to declare that a newspaper advertisement he placed in October prompted four women to come forth with claims of extramarital affairs with Livingston.

Flynt said that he also has received reports of sexual affairs involving at least a dozen other government officials since he placed the ad in the Washington Post on Oct. 4. The ad offered up to $1 million for “evidence of illicit sexual relations” with top federal lawmakers.

“Several more are going to bite the dust before this is over,” he said, describing some illicit activities and hinting at others.

Flanked by replicas of the Statue of Liberty and the blindfolded, scale-balancing Goddess of Justice, Flynt said he is on a crusade to “expose hypocrisy” in Washington.

Flynt suggested that he and independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr might be better suited for each other’s jobs. Flynt said he has paid a total of about $1 million thus far to people who have come forward with stories and to private investigators he has hired to examine claims--far less, he pointed out, than Starr’s investigation has cost.

But Starr, he said, “did more in two weeks than I have in a quarter century to make pornography available to a wider audience.”

Flynt, 55, publishes 30 magazines, including music, hobby and computer journals along with his raunchier titles. His victory in a 1988 Supreme Court 1st Amendment case inspired the 1997 film “The People vs. Larry Flynt.”

The publisher promised to publish more details, in Hustler and on his Web site, shortly after New Year’s.