Lawyer questions whether Spitzer was set up, noting political prosecutions

Teri B. · 03-11-2008, 11:03 AM

Quote:

Lawyer questions whether Spitzer was set up, noting political prosecutions

03/11/2008 @ 8:27 am
Filed by RAW STORY

A prominent New York lawyer who has written for Harper's Magazine about the politically-motivated dismissals of US Attorneys in the Bush Justice Department says he believes there's a strong case that the fall of New York governor Eliot Spitzer was politically motivated.

Spitzer was caught on a federal wiretap discussing plans to meet a high-priced prostitute in Washington, D.C. The news was first reported Monday afternoon in The New York Times.

Later that day, however, ABC News' Brian Ross revealed that federal sources said the prosecution stemmed from an investigation of Spitzer's finances -- not from the prostitution ring.

"The suspicious financial activity was initially reported by a bank to the IRS which, under direction from the Justice Department, brought kin the FBI's Public Corruption Squad," Ross wrote.

"We had no interest at all in the prostitution ring until the thing with Spitzer led us to learn about it," a Justice Department official told Ross.

Tuesday's Times added: "The rendezvous that established Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s involvement with high-priced prostitutes occurred last month in one of Washington’s grandest hotels, but the criminal investigation that discovered the tryst began last year in a nondescript office building opposite a Dunkin’ Donuts on Long Island... There, in the Hauppauge offices of the Internal Revenue Service, investigators conducting a routine examination of suspicious financial transactions reported to them by banks found several unusual movements of cash involving the governor of New York, several officials said."

"Because the focus was a high-ranking government official, prosecutors were required to seek the approval of the United States attorney general to proceed," they added. "Once they secured that permission, the investigation moved forward."

Horton doesn't buy it.

"Note that this prosecution was managed with staffers from the Public Integrity Section at the Department of Justice," Horton writes on his blog, "No Comment." "This section is now at the center of a major scandal concerning politically directed prosecutions. During the Bush Administration, his Justice Department has opened 5.6 cases against Democrats for every one involving a Republican."

In his post at Harper's, Horton notes:

(1) The prosecutors handling the case came from the Public Integrity Section.

(2) The prosecution is opened under the White-Slave Traffic Act of 1910. You read that correctly. The statute itself is highly disreputable, and most of the high-profile cases brought under it were politically motivated and grossly abusive. Here are a few:

* Heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson was the first man prosecuted under the act — for having an affair with Lucille Cameron, whom he later married. The prosecution was manifestly an effort “to get” Johnson, who at the time was the most famous African-American. (All of this is developed well in Ken Burns’s film “Unforgiveable Blackness”

*University of Chicago sociologist William I. Thomas was prosecuted for having an affair with an officer’s wife in France. Thomas was targeted because of his Bohemian social and his radical political views.

* In 1944 Charles Chaplin was prosecuted for having an affair with actress Joan Barry. The prosecution again provided cover for a politically motivated effort to drive Chaplin out of the country.

* Canadian author Elizabeth Smart was arrested and charged in 1940 while crossing the border with the British poet George Barker.

(3) The resources dedicated to the case in terms of prosecutors and investigators are extraordinary.

(4) How the investigation got started. The Justice Department has yet to give a full account of why they were looking into Spitzer’s payments, and indeed the suggestion in the ABC account is that it didn’t have anything to do with a prostitution ring. The suggestion that this was driven by an IRS inquiry and involved a bank might heighten, rather than allay, concerns of a politically motivated prosecution.

"The answer of the Justice Department to all this is likely to be: Trust us," Horton concludes. "This has nothing to do with Spitzer’s guilt or innocence. But it has everything to do with the fading integrity of the Public Integrity Section."

Now I know this guy endorsed Clinton, but try to pretend for a moment that Democrats care more than just about one guy named Obama.

Veronica · 03-11-2008, 11:15 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Teri B.

Now I know this guy endorsed Clinton, but try to pretend for a moment that Democrats care more than just about one guy named Obama.

I was telling my friend this morning that I thought this sting was set up to catch him. He has made some enemies and they were out for blood. He did put himself in this position but I think it was a set up.

ocealdia · 03-11-2008, 11:33 AM

I was reading yesterday about how he got a lot of big shot wall street financiers prosecuted. Wall Street doesn't like to be messed with.

Wall Street celebrates Spitzer's possible fall
Kathleen Pender

Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Cheers went up on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange Monday in response to news that New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer might resign over his alleged involvement with a prostitute.

It's hard to think of a man who engendered more hatred on Wall Street - or more qualified admiration from investor advocates - than Spitzer.

In his last five years as New York's attorney general, he went after investment banks for issuing conflicted stock analyst research and nailed mutual fund companies for letting favored clients engage in late trading and market timing. He caused or contributed to the downfalls of former New York Stock Exchange Chairman Richard Grasso, former AIG Chairman Maurice "Hank" Greenberg and Greenberg's son Maurice Greenberg, former chief executive of insurer Marsh & McLennan.

It wasn't just what Spitzer did, but the way he did it that angered people. Adversaries have described him as mean and vindictive. Former Goldman Sachs Chairman John Whitehead alleged that Spitzer once threatened him.

Even some allies have tussled with Spitzer. When Bill Lockyer was California's attorney general, he prosecuted several cases with Spitzer, a fellow Democrat.

Yet at a meeting of state attorneys general in Southern California in 2002, the two almost came to blows in a heated, well-publicized spat over how to spend extra money left over from the tobacco settlement. (Spitzer wanted it spent on health care; most of the other attorneys general wanted to spend it on a new nonprofit organization to support the training of their staffs.)

Critics say Spitzer cared more about furthering his political career than protecting investors.

But to fans, allies and many journalists, Spitzer was a populist crime fighter willing to attack powerful interests on his home turf - an image that carried him into the New York governor's mansion last year.

Like him or not, many people were shocked to hear him publicly apologize for acting "in a way that that violates my obligations to my family and violates my, or any, sense of right and wrong." He did not say what he did, but news reports say Spitzer, who prosecuted prostitution rings as attorney general, allegedly engaged an expensive call girl in Washington, D.C.

"What was he thinking? And with what was he thinking?" asks Joseph Grundfest, a Stanford Law School professor.

Law-and-order reputation
Steve Sidener, a San Francisco securities attorney who represents investors in class-action suits, says Spitzer is "the last person you think would get caught up in this. His reputation was being the person who wanted to clean up Wall Street and promote ethics. He was viewed by many people as being on the side of law and order."

He calls the Spitzer scandal "a Shakespearean tragedy in a way. He did a lot of things (to highlight investment fraud) at a time when the Securities and Exchange Commission (under former Chairman Harvey Pitt) was asleep on the job."

Barbara Roper, the Consumer Federation of America's director of investor protection, agrees.

"He looked at problems that existed on Wall Street that people knew about, didn't care about, and said, 'This is unacceptable.' That was true in the analyst scandal, true in the mutual fund scandal."

Where Roper faults Spitzer was in his follow-through.

"The analyst investigation was a big deal. The agreement that was negotiated was pretty modest in its reforms," she says, adding that the SEC, the NYSE and the National Association of Securities Dealers "played a major role in negotiating it."

The same is true with Spitzer's crusade against mutual fund trading practices. "It made a big splash, and relatively little came out of it in terms of meaningful reform," she says.

Roper says Spitzer "was the model of the activist attorney general, using his authority that he had very effectively to push reforms that had implications beyond the borders of his state - and using the media extraordinarily effectively to accomplish those goals."

That same quality earned Spitzer the ire of libertarian and other groups that thought he was overstepping his authority.

After he became governor, Roper says Spitzer seemed somewhat less hostile to Wall Street.

He showed up at a news conference to endorse the results of a study, commissioned by New York Sen. Chuck Schumer and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, that showed "general support of this notion on Wall Street that (U.S. securities firms) are at a disadvantage because of over-regulation," Roper says.

In recent weeks, Spitzer helped persuade some investment banks to back a capital-raising plan by Ambac, the struggling bond insurer. His alleged tryst with a prostitute occurred the night before he testified about bond insurers to Congress.

'Reckless'
Columbia Law School Professor John Coffee says, "I am an admirer of Spitzer. His greatest strength was his ability to expose conflicts of interest across a variety of contexts. Like other well-known Democrats in (recent) years, he took risks that were reckless for someone in his position."

Despite calls for Spitzer's immediate resignation, Coffee predicts he "will hang tough for at least several days to gauge the reaction" to the prostitution scandal.

Only time will tell whether Spitzer's alleged indiscretion will overshadow his record as a Wall Street crusader.

"Whatever his legacy is, it now has a very interesting asterisk," says Grundfest."

He was also named TIME Crusader of the Year 2002.

This guy has an impressive record.

He should be hung because he saw a prostitute?

What about Larry Craig, he was arrested for soliticing a male in a public restroom - are the rethugs trying to prosecute him??? Yeah.....right.

ibex · 03-11-2008, 11:42 AM

I heard somebody on the radio today point out that the amount of money transfered wasn't "suspicious" enough to motivate any bank to contact the IRS or any other Federal agency, let alone law enforcement. Somebody dropped a dime on this guy, but so what? Does anybody here not think Spitzer used the same tactics as NY AG to prosecute others for similar crimes? Or that politics never played a role in his pursuit of some cases and indifference toward others? If you live by the sword, chances are you'll die that way. Maybe the folks in LA can forgive David Vitter for this kind of thing but I doubt the people of NY state will let this shit fly. Sure, the Elephant party will make a lot of hay out of this, but Spitzer bought and paid for the rope they want to hang him with. He should resign, the sooner the better.

Veronica · 03-11-2008, 11:45 AM

I don't care what you think about Spitzer, but the fact that this started by large transactions raising a red flag. This is what led to the investigation. The implication of this is unbelievable. I do think he was targeted, however where does that leave our privacy? Are we now only to be a cash and carry society in order to have any privacy???? This is scary business as far as I am concerned. Hello Big Brother I know you are watching and I am giving you the finger.

ibex · 03-11-2008, 11:50 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Veronica

I don't care what you think about Spitzer, but the fact that this started by large transactions raising a red flag. This is what led to the investigation. The implication of this is unbelievable. I do think he was targeted, however where does that leave our privacy? Are we now only to be a cash and carry society in order to have any privacy???? This is scary business as far as I am concerned. Hello Big Brother I know you are watching and I am giving you the finger.

Billions of "large transactions" take place every day in banks, red flags aren't raised every day. You are quoting the FBI official line. If they have a snitch or a source, they certainly won't say they do. All parties are looking for a deal, a way out. Nobody wants this thing to go to trial and if Spitzer balks, he's out of his mind.

VKMHVM2 · 03-11-2008, 01:40 PM

Can you say pricey "Honey Trap?"

EMPERORS CLUB MASTERMIND HAD THREE PASSPORTS

Authorities raided Brener's home early yesterday and found $600,000 in cash and 19,000 in Euros in various safes, prosecutors said.

Brener, they said, had two Israeli passports in addition to his US passport.

VKMHVM2 · 03-11-2008, 01:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Veronica

I don't care what you think about Spitzer, but the fact that this started by large transactions raising a red flag. This is what led to the investigation. The implication of this is unbelievable. I do think he was targeted, however where does that leave our privacy? Are we now only to be a cash and carry society in order to have any privacy???? This is scary business as far as I am concerned. Hello Big Brother I know you are watching and I am giving you the finger.

The wiretaps on Emperors Club VIP were not just random listening in. They were likely part of a counter-espionage case.

W.M.DEEEZ · 03-11-2008, 01:51 PM

Evidently, the "large sums" of money were thought to be bribes of some sort. The 5000.00 figure appeared several times, causing the authorities to suspect bribery.

The man has needs, ya know.

He was doing good things for my state. I hope this doesn't stop the progress.

VKMHVM2 · 03-11-2008, 01:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by W.M.DEEEZ

Evidently, the "large sums" of money were thought to be bribes of some sort. The 5000.00 figure appeared several times, causing the authorities to suspect bribery.

The man has needs, ya know.

He was doing good things for my state. I hope this doesn't stop the progress.

He pissed off someone way up the ladder for sure.

03-11-2008, 11:33 AM	#3 (permalink)
ocealdia Democrat Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: great plains Posts: 786 My Mood: Thanks: 58 Thanked 18 Times in 15 Posts	I was reading yesterday about how he got a lot of big shot wall street financiers prosecuted. Wall Street doesn't like to be messed with. Wall Street celebrates Spitzer's possible fall Kathleen Pender Tuesday, March 11, 2008 Cheers went up on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange Monday in response to news that New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer might resign over his alleged involvement with a prostitute. It's hard to think of a man who engendered more hatred on Wall Street - or more qualified admiration from investor advocates - than Spitzer. In his last five years as New York's attorney general, he went after investment banks for issuing conflicted stock analyst research and nailed mutual fund companies for letting favored clients engage in late trading and market timing. He caused or contributed to the downfalls of former New York Stock Exchange Chairman Richard Grasso, former AIG Chairman Maurice "Hank" Greenberg and Greenberg's son Maurice Greenberg, former chief executive of insurer Marsh & McLennan. It wasn't just what Spitzer did, but the way he did it that angered people. Adversaries have described him as mean and vindictive. Former Goldman Sachs Chairman John Whitehead alleged that Spitzer once threatened him. Even some allies have tussled with Spitzer. When Bill Lockyer was California's attorney general, he prosecuted several cases with Spitzer, a fellow Democrat. Yet at a meeting of state attorneys general in Southern California in 2002, the two almost came to blows in a heated, well-publicized spat over how to spend extra money left over from the tobacco settlement. (Spitzer wanted it spent on health care; most of the other attorneys general wanted to spend it on a new nonprofit organization to support the training of their staffs.) Critics say Spitzer cared more about furthering his political career than protecting investors. But to fans, allies and many journalists, Spitzer was a populist crime fighter willing to attack powerful interests on his home turf - an image that carried him into the New York governor's mansion last year. Like him or not, many people were shocked to hear him publicly apologize for acting "in a way that that violates my obligations to my family and violates my, or any, sense of right and wrong." He did not say what he did, but news reports say Spitzer, who prosecuted prostitution rings as attorney general, allegedly engaged an expensive call girl in Washington, D.C. "What was he thinking? And with what was he thinking?" asks Joseph Grundfest, a Stanford Law School professor. Law-and-order reputation Steve Sidener, a San Francisco securities attorney who represents investors in class-action suits, says Spitzer is "the last person you think would get caught up in this. His reputation was being the person who wanted to clean up Wall Street and promote ethics. He was viewed by many people as being on the side of law and order." He calls the Spitzer scandal "a Shakespearean tragedy in a way. He did a lot of things (to highlight investment fraud) at a time when the Securities and Exchange Commission (under former Chairman Harvey Pitt) was asleep on the job." Barbara Roper, the Consumer Federation of America's director of investor protection, agrees. "He looked at problems that existed on Wall Street that people knew about, didn't care about, and said, 'This is unacceptable.' That was true in the analyst scandal, true in the mutual fund scandal." Where Roper faults Spitzer was in his follow-through. "The analyst investigation was a big deal. The agreement that was negotiated was pretty modest in its reforms," she says, adding that the SEC, the NYSE and the National Association of Securities Dealers "played a major role in negotiating it." The same is true with Spitzer's crusade against mutual fund trading practices. "It made a big splash, and relatively little came out of it in terms of meaningful reform," she says. Roper says Spitzer "was the model of the activist attorney general, using his authority that he had very effectively to push reforms that had implications beyond the borders of his state - and using the media extraordinarily effectively to accomplish those goals." That same quality earned Spitzer the ire of libertarian and other groups that thought he was overstepping his authority. After he became governor, Roper says Spitzer seemed somewhat less hostile to Wall Street. He showed up at a news conference to endorse the results of a study, commissioned by New York Sen. Chuck Schumer and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, that showed "general support of this notion on Wall Street that (U.S. securities firms) are at a disadvantage because of over-regulation," Roper says. In recent weeks, Spitzer helped persuade some investment banks to back a capital-raising plan by Ambac, the struggling bond insurer. His alleged tryst with a prostitute occurred the night before he testified about bond insurers to Congress. 'Reckless' Columbia Law School Professor John Coffee says, "I am an admirer of Spitzer. His greatest strength was his ability to expose conflicts of interest across a variety of contexts. Like other well-known Democrats in (recent) years, he took risks that were reckless for someone in his position." Despite calls for Spitzer's immediate resignation, Coffee predicts he "will hang tough for at least several days to gauge the reaction" to the prostitution scandal. Only time will tell whether Spitzer's alleged indiscretion will overshadow his record as a Wall Street crusader. "Whatever his legacy is, it now has a very interesting asterisk," says Grundfest." He was also named TIME Crusader of the Year 2002. This guy has an impressive record. He should be hung because he saw a prostitute? What about Larry Craig, he was arrested for soliticing a male in a public restroom - are the rethugs trying to prosecute him??? Yeah.....right.
	Top

03-11-2008, 11:42 AM	#4 (permalink)
ibex Senior Member Join Date: Nov 2007 Posts: 1,774 My Mood: Thanks: 147 Thanked 156 Times in 102 Posts	I heard somebody on the radio today point out that the amount of money transfered wasn't "suspicious" enough to motivate any bank to contact the IRS or any other Federal agency, let alone law enforcement. Somebody dropped a dime on this guy, but so what? Does anybody here not think Spitzer used the same tactics as NY AG to prosecute others for similar crimes? Or that politics never played a role in his pursuit of some cases and indifference toward others? If you live by the sword, chances are you'll die that way. Maybe the folks in LA can forgive David Vitter for this kind of thing but I doubt the people of NY state will let this shit fly. Sure, the Elephant party will make a lot of hay out of this, but Spitzer bought and paid for the rope they want to hang him with. He should resign, the sooner the better.
	Top

03-11-2008, 11:45 AM	#5 (permalink)
Veronica Senior Member Join Date: Oct 2007 Posts: 1,184 My Mood: Thanks: 184 Thanked 265 Times in 136 Posts	I don't care what you think about Spitzer, but the fact that this started by large transactions raising a red flag. This is what led to the investigation. The implication of this is unbelievable. I do think he was targeted, however where does that leave our privacy? Are we now only to be a cash and carry society in order to have any privacy???? This is scary business as far as I am concerned. Hello Big Brother I know you are watching and I am giving you the finger.
	Top

03-11-2008, 01:40 PM	#7 (permalink)
VKMHVM2 Senior Member Join Date: Aug 2007 Location: NYC Posts: 2,799 My Mood: Thanks: 86 Thanked 62 Times in 49 Posts	Can you say pricey "Honey Trap?" EMPERORS CLUB MASTERMIND HAD THREE PASSPORTS Authorities raided Brener's home early yesterday and found $600,000 in cash and 19,000 in Euros in various safes, prosecutors said. Brener, they said, had two Israeli passports in addition to his US passport. __________________ It's All Here! Dr. Albert Pastore: An Independent Investigation of 9-11 and the War on Terrorism Last edited by VKMHVM2; 03-11-2008 at 01:53 PM.
	Top

03-11-2008, 01:51 PM	#9 (permalink)
W.M.DEEEZ I don't exist either Join Date: Oct 2007 Posts: 1,655 Thanks: 7 Thanked 58 Times in 41 Posts	Evidently, the "large sums" of money were thought to be bribes of some sort. The 5000.00 figure appeared several times, causing the authorities to suspect bribery. The man has needs, ya know. He was doing good things for my state. I hope this doesn't stop the progress. __________________ Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you've got til it's gone
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