March 13, 2008
Spitzer Case Politically Motivated
The New Republic: Public Should Ask Tough Questions About Why Investigation Was Launched
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Play CBS Video Video What Will Happen To Spitzer? Eliot Spitzer has left the governor's mansion disgraced, stepping down amid a deeply humiliating personal scandal. But what legal consequences does he face? Byron Pitts reports.
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Video Spitzer Quits Over Sex Scandal Eliot Spitzer is leaving the governor's mansion in disgrace after being linked to a high priced prostitution ring. Karen Brown reports.
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Photo Essay Eliot Spitzer New York's Governor and former Attorney General linked to prostitution ring.
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Interactive Spitzer Scandal New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer is the target of a federal prostitution investigation.
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Timeline His Longest Days Some key moments in N.Y. Gov. Eliot Spitzer's personal and political tragedy
On Monday a friend gave me a copy of a memorandum (pdf) that Attorney General Michael Mukasey had circulated inside the Justice Department admonishing staff about how to deal with politically sensitive cases. "They must be about to bag another big-time Democrat," my friend said, jokingly. Perhaps it wasn't a joke. Within hours the wires were burning with reports that New York Governor Eliot Spitzer had been linked to a prostitution ring.
In New York, the tabloid press and comedians are having a field day with the sudden, spectacular fall of Eliot Spitzer. He had been cast as a Democratic remake of Thomas E. Dewey, the state's legendary Republican prosecutor-governor. Under his leadership, Democrats were increasingly confident of breaking a logjam in Albany by wresting the state senate from the Republicans, who viewed Spitzer as a mortal threat. But Monday's disclosures linking Spitzer to a prostitution ring brought the state to a standstill, and he announced his resignation Wednesday morning.
Spitzer's public statements did not include protestations of innocence, as might have been expected if he were to vigorously contest the claims circulating in the media. Moreover, media accounts point to a damning case. Spitzer, known for an aggressive prosecutorial style that earned him enmity in key Wall Street financial circles, had as attorney general gone after a prostitution ring or two, so a charge of hypocrisy has been added to the mix.
All of this makes for excellent copy, particularly for the cable news networks and other outlets that feed off just this sort of tale of personal fall. But there may well be a story-behind-the-story. How did the case against Spitzer get launched? Was he brought down by a politically motivated investigation?
The integrity of our criminal justice system rests on the notion that we investigate crimes, not people. As Robert Jackson, probably the greatest attorney general of the last century, put it:
If the prosecutor is obliged to choose his cases, it follows that he can choose his defendants. Therein is the most dangerous power of the prosecutor: that he will pick people that he thinks he should get, rather than pick cases that need to be prosecuted. With the law books filled with a great assortment of crimes, a prosecutor stands a fair chance of finding at least a technical violation of some act on the part of almost anyone. In such a case, it is not a question of discovering the commission of a crime and then looking for the man who has committed it, it is a question of picking the man and then searching the law books, or putting investigators to work, to pin some offense on him.
The way prosecutorial power is wielded divides a real democracy from a banana republic.
The story emerging around the fall of Eliot Spitzer suggests that the case did not start with the report of a crime. Rather it started with a decision to look into Spitzer and his financial dealings. In the course of an open-ended investigation, information about a prostitution circle surfaced. That looks abusive. An investigation like that provides no basis to acquit Spitzer. But it suggests that when his case is done, the public should be pressing some tough questions about why this investigation was launched and pushed forward.
Specifically, the official narrative suggests that a Long Island bank noticed an odd pattern of payments made by Spitzer between different accounts. The payments were not enormous sums and the bank is said to have been concerned that a large number of transfers were made so as to fall below the $10,000 reporting threshold. The Los Angeles Times reported that Spitzer asked that his name be taken off the money wires, which reportedly aroused suspicion. The bank submitted a Suspicious Activity Report (SAR) to the IRS. The payments which totaled up to $80,000, looked suspicious, we are told, and were examined on the basis that they might be an effort to money-launder bribes. This was reported to the IRS in Hauppauge, Long Island, which in turn involved the Public Integrity Section in the Department of Justice.
Spitzer's request that his name be removed could have been a legitimate trigger for an SAR. But there are some fair questions as to the claims about bribes. Thanks to his father's real estate fortune, Spitzer is an extremely wealthy man, and his channeling of payments at the level suggested can hardly be viewed as something that raises legitimate suspicion. As money laundering goes, $40,000 to $80,000 is peanuts - not the sort of thing that would normally raise an eyebrow. Here it is not the sum involved that triggered suspicion; it is the person who made the payments. Similarly, the suggestion that these payments might have been bribe payments which were being laundered is absurd. In fact they were payments made by Spitzer, not receipts. The facts offered barely meet a plausibility test. Most significantly, there was no basis to suspect bribery - which is what ostensibly launched the entire probe. Several about this case have suggested that it is somehow routine for prosecutors to go through the financial records of public officials to look for evidence of corruption. But in the absence of specific grounds justifying the investigation (for instance, an informant complaining about a bribe) prosecutors have no such authority. In this case, the basis for action is extraordinarily weak. Most importantly, the investigators do not appear to be looking into a crime, they appear to be investigating Spitzer in the hopes of finding something compromising.
The SAR put the matter in the hands of the IRS. In the last six years, the IRS has begun to amass an astonishing record of politically motivated investigations - most recently one targeting Barack Obama's church.
The IRS, according to the official line, noting that the matter related to a public official, turned it over to the Public Integrity Section (PIN) at the Department of Justice. In theory, PIN exists to avoid an appearance that prosecutions are politically motivated by insuring the application of uniform national standards. Practice at PIN has, however, been difficult to reconcile with theory. PIN has emerged as one of the most highly politicized branches of a highly politicized Justice Department. According to a study done by two university professors, under President Bush PIN has initiated 5.6 cases involving Democrats for every one case involving a Republican. This statistical data strongly suggest that PIN has a habit of aggressively pushing cases on the basis of partisan political criteria.
Considering that the official account shows this was a "routine" examination of bank records, the level of resources allocated to it, including investigators and prosecutors, was lavish. This again suggests a political prosecution. Political direction is rarely overt. It usually takes the form of generous allocation of resources for political targets, and constriction of resources for persons who are politically protected. Clearly, moving the case against Spitzer had become a priority.
Two more questions should be asked about the prosecution. The first is whether a selective attitude is taken in prosecution - that is, whether the Justice Department is treating Spitzer in a manner consistent with other (notably Republican) figures caught in a similarly compromised position. The second is how the matter was broken to the press.
On each of these points, the information now available raises unsettling issues about the conduct of the Justice Department. One close parallel involving a prostitution investigation is the case of the "D.C. Madam." In that case, federal prosecutors have proceeded against the prostitution ring and have shown little interest in the customer list, which is said to include a former high-ranking Bush Administration official (Randall Tobias, director of the U.S. Agency for International Development) and a U.S. Senator (David Vitter, Republican of Louisiana). The prosecutors' conduct in the "D.C. Madam" case has been remarkably deferential to the public figures involved. That case cannot be squared with the investigation into Governor Spitzer - it points to a double standard.
Politically abusive prosecutions are almost always marked by media-friendly prosecutors. The essence of political prosecution is less to bag the political prey than to make partisan propaganda by marking the target as "corrupt." And the accounts published in The New York Times, ABC News, and other media outlets reveal investigators and prosecutors eager to get the details out and on to the public record. (On Friday, a Times reporter received a tip that "Client 9" was "a New York official.") Indeed, there is an extremely revealing penchant for salacious detail in the complaint - insinuations about the sexual proclivities of "Client 9," for instance. This may have been included gratuitously to humiliate Spitzer and destroy any prospects for his future political career. If there is a legitimate prosecutorial purpose served, I can't fathom it.
Was the Spitzer investigation politically motivated? It's still too early to say with any assurance, but the facts offered about the case so far raise more questions than they answer. The Justice Department's response to inquiries may be "trust us." But it may discover that the reservoir of public trust has been exhausted.
By Scott Horton
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See all 39 CommentsTo make the argument that finds its roots in the "its just ***" excuse of the Clinton era is simply wrong. The issue of character is important in teaching our children the difference between right and wrong. By the way did you really suggest that at any given time 100''s of young male politicians were hiring prostitutes? or buying gifts for women (gift buying is very different from paying for ***)
First to say the NY people will suffer being governed by someone they did not elect is an insult to their elecorates intelligence did none of those people know who the Lt Gov. was as they voted.
Second Mr Stein argues that the punishment exceeds the crime. Mr Spitzer''s very public attack on Richard Strong for issues that (although wrong) cost his mutual fund holders literally pennies over the course of years. The threats resulted in the demise of the StrongFunds and the loss of 1500 jobs in Wisconsin. All of this done for Eliot Spitzer''s personal quest to become governor. A punishment to people who had less control of the situation than the voters of NY.
Defending this hypocrite, Mr Stein. is a waste of your time and mine and is frankly frightening to those of us in the real world.
The bigger and more interesting story is the legally blind Governor. Cool.
This is a man who swore to uphold the laws of the U.S., a man in charge of many legal matters in New York.
That he could not control his sexual emotions puts him at risk in deciding other matters important to the people of New York.
Sptizer should be prosecuted just as any other person would be.
Period.
I feel so sorry that his wife and daughters have to go through this indiscretion.
Public only reacts to allegations like sexual misconduct, murder etc. I think local news is mainly to blame for this situation.
Public only reacts to allegations like sexual misconduct, murder etc. I think local news is mainly to blame for this situation.
They''ve just held on this Rovian tidbit so they could bring it out in an election year and get the right wing nuts all up in the air with a *** scandal.
It''s a really sad thing this young man had it all and ruined it. Why don''t they hunt out all of the political customers of Excelon...(catchy little name there isn''t it, kinda like a take off on Exxon, rofl!)
Their is no fishing expedition here, just nature taking it''s course.
Spitzer has confessed, the New Republic, only wants to pretend that it can shift the blame.
And, of course, the laws and democratic process are meaningless, artificial roadblocks to be agressively hurdled.
Posted by Emma915 at 11:30 AM : Mar 14, 2008
May I assume from this that you are one of those who think it''s fine for your phone to be wiretapped, your financial records disclosed and even your reading history made public?
Emma, sheeple like you are a far bigger problem than Eliot Spitzer.
See the stories on Don Siegelman, former governor of Alabama who is now in prison. When Republicans couldn''t steal the election that put him in office they threw him in jail instead. He was prosecuted by Gonzalez'' DOJ and tried in front of a Bush-appointed federal judge. His home was broken into. His lawyer''s office was ransacked. The chief whisleblower had her house burned down and her car run off the road.
This is Republican politics as usual. Eliot Spitzer hasn''t seen the worst yet.
When is going after the targeted individual justified in opening a criminal case? Surely, one''s political persuasion is not justification for searching for a criminal statute to justify prosecution. Such is the action of the small and produces reluctance to seek office by the greater.
This is justice, in the real sense. Political or private, Spitzer was a bad guy. He had no feelings for anyone. Just a cold hearted person. How could he have put Senator Bruno through an investigation of misuse of State transportation when Bruno''s wife was dying, and undoubtedly in hospice at the same time. That was a cruel thing to do. Now Spitzer is being found to be guilty of the same thing he accused Bruno of, even worse-unnecessary trips to cover up his partaking of prostitutes. What a sicko. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
Therefore, what ever happens to this b-s-t-r-d he is going to get what he deserves!!
I am sorry for his wife and family. What their household must be like-full of abuse, power and control. I hope they all get the couseling they need to overcome this horrible excuse for a man. It is obvious wealth and power corrupt!
There is no double standard. The others didn''t try to hide the payments. Spitzers knew what he was doing was against banking laws. How stupid he is.
Posted by perception5 at 09:20 AM : Mar 14, 2008"
Oh get off your f**king high horse, that chimp you and your ilk put into office has done more harm to the constitution than any administration in history. Once again you are nothing but a hypocritical a$$.
I can''t stand our present administration and wouldn''t put anything corrupt or illegal past them but in this case Spitzer hung himself out to dry, the Feds didn''t have to do anything but follow the money trail.
Mukasey got a free-be on this one, he didn''t have to set anyone up or manipulate any evidence or even plant anything.
Folks this story is a shinning example of the massive corruption in our mostly liberal MSM wolfpack press.
This isn''t the first time the "den" of liberals that work at the New Republic have shown their "liberal feathers and support" for their close pals in the Demcorat party.
Really sad indeed........not exactly what our Founding Fathers wanted.....
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