Was Government Out To Get Eliot Spitzer? Congressional Panel To Investigate

New York Times:

ALBANY - Eight months after a federal investigation into a prostitution ring brought about the downfall of Gov. Eliot Spitzer, the question still persists in some circles: Was the federal government out to get Mr. Spitzer?

No evidence has surfaced to support such an assertion, and investigators have said that politics played no role in their pursuit of Mr. Spitzer. But that has not put to rest suspicions, expressed on left wing blogs, that Mr. Spitzer, a zealous pursuer of Wall Street wrongdoing who some thought could one day be president, had been singled out.

Read the whole story: New York Times

Comments

[qdog112]

I have no problem with what Spitzer may have done to stimulate the economy - you know supporting capitalism, as long as he paid with his own money.

Now the important thing is, if he was about to help crack open a component of the cause of this economical debacle - I applaud him and hope that the real culprits of the greater crimes are brought to justice.

[vippy]

I have no doubt he was being exposed because he would not have taken NO for answer when he
wanted to investigate the culprits who caused the housing mess. Remember Bush said no!
Bush also said no to the 9/11 investigation and therefore I believe it was an in-house job. Had it not
been it would have been investigated down to the last bit of evidence. Nothing like that occurred.
However, since the deregulation was started when Clinton was still in office I wonder if Spitzer actually
ignored the problem.

[notb observer]

Ever since the Patriot Act (a name designed to fool the gullible people into thinking it needed to be supported) was passed, and then we got reports of cell phones being tapped on an industrial basis, I knew that the Bush Administration and Neo-Con fascists were up to no good.
While I do not agree that prostitution should be illegal, unfortunately it is, and therefore Spitzer committed a crime. However, this has too much similarity to the US Attorney firings which were overseen by Cheney and Rove.
There have been enough examples of abuse of power in the Bush Administration over the past 8 years that we now have to closely scrutinize everything they have done. Any concerned American has to ask if there was a political motivation behind this investigation. Why were LEA resources used to surveil and investigate a politician when there are apparently so many "terrorist" boogie men out there who "hate us for our freedom".
If it turns out that the investigation was politically motivated, then this is what's known as OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE ! According tot he law, Spitzer could be exonerated for his "crime" based on the fact that the process used to bring him to justice was illegal.
We should ALL care that the law is respected in this country, otherwise we end up with a dictatorship not unlike the "unitary executive" that Cheney worked so hard to foist over us.

[Perrier007]

So, it wasn't really Spitzer who got caught with, and was found to have paid oodles of money over a period of time to, prostitutes? The very "crime" that Spitzer had prosecuted more than a few people for, and one of the "crimes" that Spitzer had vowed to eliminate?

[LutherBrixton]

Next thing you're going to be telling me is the Justice Department has become completely politicized under the Bush administration and that they are illegally monitoring the phone calls of political enemies looking for dirt to destroy them. If that were true Bush/Cheney would have to be both impeached and imprisoned, and since Bush is a devout Christian, it would not only be against the law but against the dictates of his faith.... You probably also believe 9.11 had nothing whatsoever to do with toppling Saddam Hussein and building massive military bases in Iraq!! Crazy talk!!

[qdog112]

Thank you sir - do you think they got it?

[notb observer]

That's just plain crazy talk !

Or, as we call it where I come from, "Sarah Palin giving a stump speech" :)

[Zeebob]

You people should read the article that Spitzer published just weeks before him gettig busted where he linked the Bush administation to the houseing collapse!

[qdog112]

Most of them can't get pass the word prostitutes.

[NC1165]

So how close was he to revealing the plans to implode Wall Street by the banksters? To close, apparently. When do events such as Spitzer's downfall for whoring in D.C. and Wall Street scandal stop becoming a coincidence of parallel events and actually cross paths? So Spitzer got layed. Big deal. But the taxpayers got screwed.

[BBackSoon]

I think he was stupid and flushed his own career but I believe it was a hit job.

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/3/12/spitzer_expected_to_resign_over_prostitution

JUAN GONZALEZ: That’s what I wanted to ask you. As somebody who has covered a lot of federal investigations, this is an astonishingly rapid progress.
WAYNE BARRETT: Well, Juan, not only that, I mean, they had wires on two phones. And they had a warrant approved by the court for those wires that would have extended, in one case, for almost another full month. And they brought the case down when they had wires on these lines. They wanted one man, they wanted one man only. Maybe too many rich guys were walking through the—you know, coming through on the same wires. Whatever the reason is, they brought these wires down almost instantly, as soon as they closed the deal on Eliot. And so, I find it to be a very peculiar investigation.
Now, what I don’t understand about the structuring allegation is, clearly, you can pick up the client no. 9. Eliot Spitzer refused to deal by wire transfer. And now they’re saying he had wire transfers that would have exceeded the $10,000 limit, and that’s what brought—that’s what caused the investigation to start. But you can clearly see from the court record that he refused, in this instance, at least, to make any payments by wire transfer. So there’s a lot of unanswered questions about how this—

[leeman79]

Of course they were out to get him. He was getting ready to blow the lid on this subprime mortgage scam. Unfortunately, he encountered his own "lid" and "blowing" problems before he could testify.

[rollingdivision]

Yeah, Spitzer's victim. Sure.

[allwrite]

Regardless of the facts in the Spitzer case, what are the odds that the snooping privileges conferred by the Patriot Act would never be used to gather dirt on domestic political oppostion?

[aggl]

Spitzer deserves a senior cabinet post -- he'd make an ideal attorney general, particularly during these times. Who cares if he has a taste for hookers?

[windypaperboy]

I've been always suspicious about this Spitzer business. First, who care if he visits hookers? Second, who had so much interest in looking a petty credit card expenses. Third, if there were inappropriate expenses in the expense report, this is not the way to deal with the issue. First you conciliate and the you balance the account. That's it. You don't go out there to make a major press scandal on the issue, unless you have very determined political objectives.

[Y2KCockroach]

Um, yeah, maybe they were out to get him, but he didn't help his case by having a hooker bouncing on his lap, now did he? I am a Spitzer fan; always was. I also think that the issue of who he bonks in his spare time is none of our business. I also think that his wife should have killed him for what he did, and that no jury would convict her for it. But hey, that is all in the past. He was a rising star, he had it all in front of him, and he blew it. Nobody should shed any tears over that. It should go without saying that when you attack the privileged class in this country, they are going to come after you. He had to know that, and yet he played with dynamite. He got caught, and his career is over. Big deal.There will be more "Spitzers" in the future, and if they are students of history, they should either toe the line, or hire a babysitter to keep watch over themselves.

[CalliDem]

Agreed ... same thing with John Edwards ...the "Son of the Mill" ends up being"The Run of the Mill"

[IncredulousGeezer]

I think the word is boinks, but who am I to say what Cockroaches do and how they describe it :)

[guajiro]

If there's anything that aggravates me to death it is a public official using their office to achieve a personal vendetta, a-la-Palin. Cops who intimidate young girls or men into sex, judges who let their relatives or those of friends get away scott-free from DWI's, etc. There indeed should be an investigation into whether there was political motivation in the use of government employees and resources to get to Spitzer. He's already paid his dues. Those who hide behind the government walls still need to be outed.