My, my, now wasn't this a silly thing to do. Robert Halderman is now in custody and has been charged with the very stupid attempt to extort $2 million out of David Letterman.

OK, so the allegations were true, David Letterman was in fact (or at least had had) affairs with one or more of his female staffers. But to demand $2 million to not reveal the proof that he had…well, that's fairly silly. For you never know in such cases whether the person being blackmailed will simply go, "Well, yeah, and?" and tell everyone.

And get you arrested for attempting to blackmail him. Which is exactly what has just happened to Halderman:

Robert Halderman in custody over David Letterman extortion. AP Photo/Dharapak

Robert Halderman has been taken into custody over the David Letterman extortion case.

Robert
J Halderman, commonly known as Joe Halderman, has been taken into
custody over the extraordinary scenes that attended the attempt to
blackmail David Letterman.

A full report on the David Letterman extortion can be found at that link.

Robert
or Joe Halderman (not to be confused with either Joe Haldeman the
sci-fi auther, nor Bob Haldeman, Nixon's aide at Watergate) is, or at
least was until a day or two ago, a producer at the "48 Hours" show for
CBS. As the AP report says, it wasn't Letterman who announced the name,
rather CBS itself unofficially: