SCREENSHOT PHOTO Vera Baker’s website CapeCaribbean.com

The National Enquirer is reporting that President Barack Obama “has been caught in a shocking cheating scandal after being caught in a Washington, DC Hotel with a former campaign aide.” Their claims are based on first-hand accounts from a limo driver that in 2004 reportedly drove Barack Obama and campaign fund-raiser Vera Baker around Washington, D.C. before dropping them off together at the Hotel George.

The driver says, “But to the best of my knowledge she did not have a room at the hotel and she was not staying there so I thought that it was a bit odd.”

The story was originally reported in the U.K.’s Daily Mail back in October of 2008. That article claims Michelle Obama removed Baker from her job after “she became convinced that he had developed a personal friendship with her.”

Vera Baker adamantly denies the rumors, saying “nothing happened” between her and the president and so far there hasn’t been much evidence to the contrary. The limo driver talked to all the major news networks back in 2008 (according to Confederate Yankee) including The National Enquirer and none of them decided it was enough to run a story. The only difference now seems to be that members of the Republican Party are offering a million dollars to any one with information about Obama and Baker.

Despite the lack of evidence, the story still has legs due in large part to all the suspicious details surrounding Vera Baker, whose career went from being a fund raiser for Baker-Wambu & Associates, which she co-founded with Muthoni Wambu in 200, to “National Finance Director on Obama’s 2004 Senate Campaign, to a position with the full-service municipal bond brokerage firm Alta Capital Group, to Deputy Chief of Staff for Senator Roland Burris to owner of CapeCaribbean.com.

Vera Baker headed off to Fort de France, Martinique to start the site CapeCaribbean.com, which is self-described as “a strategic mix of marketing based services,” with Marc Merlini – whose name Baker would take on when she was listed as “Vera Baker-Merlini” on Senator Burris’ staff.

After this story began getting a second wind the site was deleted as well as all of the cached histories of it in the various search engines. There were some folks on message boards that were able to capture screen grabs of it before it was completely erased. Surprisingly, most of those have also been deleted! (They appear to have been uploaded to PhotoBucket for the most part.)

But, I was able to find one remaining image of the website’s “About Us” page:

Here’s what the page says:

Cape Caribbean, LLC

a strategic mix of marketing based services

Firm Principal VERA BAKER spends her time between the office in Fort de France, Martinique and the office Miama, Florida. She is an avid traveler, having VISITED 17 countries on 5 CONTINENTS, multi-lingual (English and French) and an occasional free lance writer.

Prior to launching Cape Caribbean, Ms. Baker worked for Alta Capital Group-a full-service municipal bond broker-deal. She joined Alta Capital Group after serving as a Principal at Baker-Wambu & Associates, a strategic political and fundraising consulting firm based in Washington, DC. Previously, she served as the National Finance Director on Senator Barack Obama’s 2004 Senate Campaign.

She also served as the Deputy Political Director at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Born and raised in San Francisco, CA, Ms. Baker received her dual Bachelor degrees in Political, Legal, and Economic Analysis and African American Studies from Mills College. She worked toward a Master of Art in Political Science from Howard University and a Masters of Art in African American Studies.

Here’s the information on the domain registration from networksolutions.com:

Registrant:
Cape Caribbean
634 E. 14th Street, #8
New York, New York 10009
United States

Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (http://www.godaddy.com)
Domain Name: CAPECARIBBEAN.COM
Created on: 07-Mar-08
Expires on: 07-Mar-12
Last Updated on: 07-Jan-10

Administrative Contact:
Baker, Vera info@capecaribbean.com
Cape Caribbean
634 E. 14th Street, #8
New York, New York 10009
United States
3059100140 Fax —

Technical Contact:
Baker, Vera info@capecaribbean.com
Cape Caribbean
634 E. 14th Street, #8
New York, New York 10009
United States
3059100140 Fax —

Domain servers in listed order:
NS11.DOMAINCONTROL.COM
NS12.DOMAINCONTROL.COM
The previous information has been obtained either directly from the registrant or a registrar of the domain name other than Network Solutions. Network Solutions, therefore, does not guarantee its accuracy or completeness.

Show underlying registry data for this record

Current Registrar: GODADDY.COM, INC.
IP Address: 68.178.232.100 (ARIN & RIPE IP search)
IP Location: US(UNITED STATES)-ARIZONA-SCOTTSDALE
Lock Status: clientDeleteProhibited
DMOZ no listings
Y! Directory: see listings
WebSite Title: www.capecaribbean.com
Data as of: 23-Apr-2008