Calls grow for Democrat Governor Spitzer to resign
By Stevenson Swanson | Tribune correspondent
8:04 PM CDT, March 11, 2008
Democrat Governor Eliot Spitzer, embroiled in allegations that he patronized a high-priced prostitution service, remained sequestered in his Fifth Avenue apartment Tuesday, reportedly pondering his political future amid growing calls for him to resign.
A day after the stunning news emerged of Spitzer's supposed sexual escapades with a call girl, the former self-described "steamroller" prosecutor found himself with few public allies.
James Tedisco, a state legislative leader with whom Spitzer has tangled in the past, called for him to resign within two days or face impeachment. Citizen Action, a good-government group that supported him for governor in 2006, said he could no longer govern effectively. Democrats, including David Paterson, the lieutenant governor who could become the state's first African-American governor, largely kept quiet, awaiting Spitzer's decision.
And on Wall Street, which bore the brunt of his career-building campaigns against corporate victims when he was New York's attorney general, stock brokers and financial workers made little effort to disguise their glee. Cheers and laughter broke out on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange when the news crossed the wire Monday.
Apart from a brief appearance Monday to make a terse apology to his family and the citizens of the Empire State, Spitzer has remained out of sight since news of his involvement with the Emperors Club VIP prostitution ring became public.
Sources close to the governor were quoted as saying that he was weighing a resignation, possibly as part of a deal to avoid prosecution.
Or he could be bracing for a lengthy legal battle, planning to tough it out in the manner of former President Bill Clinton, who survived revelations of his affair with Monica Lewinsky.
Spitzer, who has not been charged with a crime, is being represented by Michele Hirshman of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, a highly regarded litigation firm where Spitzer worked briefly shortly after graduating from Harvard Law School.
Hirshman was chief of the public corruption unit at the U.S. Attorney's office in Manhattan, and a top deputy of Spitzer's when he was attorney general.
Spitzer, a 48-year-old father of three teenage daughters, was identified as "Client 9" in a federal complaint involving the Emperors Club, which reportedly charges its affluent clients $1,000 to $5,500 an hour. The New York governor, whose family wealth has been estimated at $500 million, allegedly arranged for a prostitute identified as "Kristen" to meet him at a Washington hotel last month, for which he paid her $4,300, part of which represented payment for past and future dealings with Emperors Club VIP, according to the complaint.
But the Washington tryst, in room 871 of the Mayflower Hotel, was apparently not the first time that Spitzer availed himself of the club's services.
Newsday reported that the governor had at least seven or eight liaisons in recent years with prostitutes who worked for the New Jersey-based service, citing sources familiar with the investigation into Spitzer's relationship with the ring. The encounters occurred around the country, and for each encounter, Spitzer paid several thousand dollars, the sources said. The interstate nature of Spitzer's alleged assignations would seem to violate the century-old Mann Act, a federal law that makes it illegal to transport women across state lines for "immoral purposes."
But Eugene O'Donnell, a law professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said that prosecutions of a prostitute's customers is rare under the Mann Act. A more likely legal strategy would be to charge that the governor sought to hide the financial transactions that paid for his sessions with "Kristen" and other call girls.
Spitzer's involvement with the Emperor Club VIP reportedly came to light when his bank reported suspicious transactions to the IRS. In an illegal practice known as "structuring," Spitzer allegedly broke a large transfer of money into several smaller transfers. Banks are required to notify federal authorities when customers transfer more than $10,000, a regulation aimed at detecting money laundering, drug deals and funding for terrorists.
Newsday reported that Spitzer also called his bank to ask that his name be removed from one series of transfers after they had gone through. The bank reportedly refused.
"Structuring suggests a level of corruption that isn't necessarily suggested by prostitution," said O'Donnell, a former assistant district attorney in Brooklyn and Queens. Referring to Spitzer as a potential defendant, he said, "Somebody who's a lawyer, somebody who's prosecuted schemes and scams, is enmeshed in schemes and scams of his own. That's more problematical if you're trying to defend him."
soswanson@tribune.com
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