I think they knew about his nanny problem but didn't know about this other stuff. Heck, its been 12 years since Zoe, and they could just do a song and dance about the "war" effort etc and how half the country is illegal now anyway. But when it starting looking like they had nominated a guy to the highest council of government who was a man of exceeding poor judgement, they decided to concoct a story that would be a lot less politicaly damaging, let it all out on a Friday, hoping the story would die down before the news cycle started again on Monday. I was amazed they had ever nominated this guy. My brother-in-law, a NH fireman, said to me it was pretty well known that the rank and file NYPD thought this guy was a total jerk who was responsible for a lot of the problems that ended up metaztisizing on 9-11 into communications failures and command failures that got a lot of cops killed. His tenure in Iraq was a scandal, of which the pussy Pentagon press corp never publicized - the guy was literally kicked out of the place. He was successful at one thing, however, being a talking head toughguy bad cop on Faux News and subsequent rightwing media machine darling. Bush wanted image, not competance.