Posted on 03/26/2008 8:27:33 AM PDT by pissant
As upsetting and intolerable as Eliot Spitzer’s patronage of high-priced prostitutes was for most New Yorkers, the notion that he may have lied about his involvement in the “Troopergate” scandal — raised by a New York Times story Monday — should be even more infuriating.
And these wouldn’t be little “white” lies concerning minor details of the scandal, in which his aides planted an embarrassing story about Spitzer’s chief political adversary in the Times Union. They would be bald-faced whoppers concerning Spitzer’s fundamental role in the political dirty trick on Senate Majority Leader Joseph L. Bruno.
When the story broke last July and it became apparent that Spitzer aides had set up a hatchet job on Bruno, Spitzer denied knowing about it or having anything to do with it. He maintained a moral high ground, expressing remorse for his aides’ behavior, suspending one and demoting another.
But in recent testimony before Albany County District Attorney David Soares, one of those aides — who was subsequently granted immunity from prosecution and thus has no reason to lie — reportedly said that Spitzer was behind the whole operation; that the then-governor insisted on leaking the damaging information when the aide expressed concern that doing so might start a political war.
It did exactly that, and may have even led to the governor’s downfall: According to a different story in Monday’s Times, Roger Stone, the infamous Republican consultant/dirty trickster, may have been the person who instigated the FBI investigation into Spitzer’s use of high-priced prostitutes. (Stone himself became a casualty of the Spitzer-Bruno war, fired by Bruno last August for allegedly making a threatening phone call to Spitzer’s father.) Stone told the Times that he had his lawyers write the FBI last November, alerting the Bureau to Spitzer’s patronage of prostitutes on trips to Florida.
However morally repugnant, hypocritical and illegal it may have been for Spitzer to do so, it was still a mostly personal matter that had nothing to do with his management of the state. Lying to the public about a very public matter — Troopergate, after all, distracted state government for months — is a different story, even if it turns out that none of the lying took place under oath.
We’ll presumably find out from Soares when his investigation is complete in the next few days, but if it does turn out that Spitzer did lie under oath — Soares interviewed him about Troopergate at one point — he should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, for perjury.
Ooooooo! Juicy. :)
Let’s hope the prosecutors go after this dirtbag.
Ping
DIMBULBOCRAT
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A democrat caught in a lie? No way!
It is easy to see how the left, when it gets total power, rounds up and disposes if it’s enemies.
This version falls right into the Alan Dershowitz trap to get Eliot off by making the whore-fixated animal into a "victim." Dersh has been the only one coming to Spitler's defense.
More plausible is this official version: A security analyst was looking at a mountain of bank tips sent to the IRS about suspicious account activity. They can't possibly attend to them all. However, in this case, it seems large sums of money were going out to shell companies (a red flag). The analyst spied Spitzer's name and thought "no, it can't be"-----and immediately concluded someone was using Spitzer’s name for fraudulent activities perhaps in political bribes and corruption.
That's why they decided to investigate----to protect Spitzer. But when analysts traced the money, they found it was going to the call girl operation.
Dersh is a Spitler suckup--plenty of money to be made there. Spitzer WAS NOT being targeted in the hooker sting. However, L/E was conducting surveillance on the ring and found they had Spizter on tape, ordering up hookers.
That's how he got caught---cause he was high-profile good guy---he had made a name for himself as a crime-fighter.
Crime fighter my Aunt Tilly---Eliot Spizer was more Meyer Lansky than Eliot Ness.
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