Spitzer Resigns

[Sylph]

March 12, 2008

Spitzer Resigns, Citing Personal Failings

By DANNY HAKIM and ANAHAD O’CONNOR

Gov. Eliot Spitzer, reeling from revelations that he had been a client of a prostitution ring, announced his resignation today, becoming the first governor of New York to be forced from office in nearly a century.

Mr. Spitzer, appearing somber and with his wife at his side, said his resignation is to be effective Monday, and that Lt. Gov. David A. Paterson would be sworn in to replace him.

“I am deeply sorry that I did not live up to what was expected of me,” he said. “To every New Yorker, and to all those who believed in what I tried to stand for, I sincerely apologize.”

“Over the course of my public life, I have insisted — I believe correctly — that people regardless of their position or power take responsibility for their conduct,” he added. “I can and will ask no less of myself. For this reason, I am resigning from the office of governor.”

Mr. Spitzer is the first governor of New York to resign from office since 1973, when Nelson A. Rockefeller stepped down to devote himself to a policy group, and the first to be forced from office since William Sulzer was impeached and removed from his post in 1913 in a scandal over campaign contribution fraud.

In his brief statement at his headquarters in Manhattan, Mr. Spitzer thanked his family for offering support and compassion, and said he had spent the last several days atoning for his personal failings.

Mr. Spitzer ended his speech by saying he would leave politics, and then departed quickly without taking questions.

“As I leave public life, I will first do what I need to do to help and heal myself and my family,” he said. “Then I will try once again, outside of politics, to serve the common good and to move toward the ideals and solutions which I believe can build a future of hope and opportunity for us and for our children.”

Since issuing an initial apology on Monday, Mr. Spitzer had been holed up at his apartment at Fifth Avenue and 79th Street in Manhattan, where his aides said he had been engaged in an intense legal and family debate about whether to resign or, as his wife was urging, to stay on. Part of that debate involved whether Mr. Spitzer would be able to work out a deal with prosecutors to avoid criminal charges.

In a rare move, Michael J. Garcia, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, released a statement after Mr. Spitzer’s resignation saying that there is no deal.

“There is no agreement between this Office and Governor Eliot Spitzer, relating to his resignation or any other matter,” Mr. Garcia said.

In the moments after Mr. Spitzer resigned, his successor, Mr. Paterson, also released a statement saying that he was “saddened” by what had happened and that “my heart goes out to him and to his family at this difficult and painful time.”

“It is now time for Albany to get back to work as the people of this state expect from us,” he said.

As Mr. Spitzer, a first-term Democrat, took the past two days to contemplate his next move, the New York political world remained in a suspended state, with cries — even from fellow Democrats — growing louder for him to step down.

In one of the last and desperate rounds of the end game, a top Spitzer administration official reached out to Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver’s staff on Tuesday to see if the governor could avoid an impeachment vote. But the prospects were grim.

Republicans had pledged to try to have Mr. Spitzer impeached and only 34 of the more than 100 Democrats in the Assembly would be needed for the matter to be referred to the Senate for an impeachment trial. It was clear during the discussions that 34 or more Democrats were almost certain to vote against the governor.

That outcome would have been dire for the governor, because his top political rival, Senate majority leader Joseph L. Bruno, leads the Senate, where a trial would have been held.

“An impeachment proceeding would force Democrats to either abandon him or defend him,” said one leading Democrat. “They would abandon him.”

Sheldon Silver, the Assembly speaker, said Tuesday that Mr. Spitzer should do “what’s best for his family,” but stopped short of calling on the governor to step down. “It is now up to the governor to make a determination that’s best for his family. I pray for his children.” When asked what Mr. Silver thought was best for the Spitzer family, he did not respond.

Mr. Silver offered a few details of his conversation with Mr. Spitzer on Tuesday afternoon before the governor briefly spoke to the public. “I said to him then and I say it now, he’s got to take care of his family first and be concerned about them. I told him that we will carry on in the legislative process that moves the budget forward. We intend to pass our budget tomorrow. I hope the Senate will do the same.”

At a televised news conference on Wednesday morning, Mr. Bruno, the Senate majority leader who will become the lieutenant governor when Mr. Paterson replaces Mr. Spitzer, told reporters that he had not spoken with Mr. Spitzer or any of his top aides about the impending resignation.

“No one has contacted me officially,” he said. “We are following the reports as you are. But in the meantime, I am staying with our plan to pass a budget, talk to the speaker, and we’re going to go public in a real way on Monday.”

Mr. Bruno, a Republican who clashed frequently with Mr. Spitzer, said he was praying for the governor and his family and urged all New Yorkers to do so as well.

On Tuesday, Mr. Spitzer cut himself off from all but the most senior members of his staff. His lawyer, Michele Hirschman, was reaching out to federal prosecutors to try to strike a deal in hopes of avoiding charges.

Close aides to the governor suggested on Tuesday that the mood in the Spitzer home was tense, with the governor’s wife, Silda Wall Spitzer, recommending that he not step down, but they cautioned that the situation could change at any time.

The revelation of Mr. Spitzer’s involvement with the high-end prostitution ring gripped the nation, and more than 70 reporters and photographers clustered outside the governor’s Upper East Side high-rise on Tuesday, separated from the building by a metal barricade erected by the police.

Three helicopters whirred overhead as tourists atop passing double-decker buses snapped pictures of the scene. When Mr. Spitzer finally emerged from the building at 11:15 a.m. Wednesday and got into an S.U.V. with his wife, news helicopters followed above as the S.U.V. made the 40-block trek to Mr. Spitzer’s headquarters on Third Avenue.

Mr. Spitzer’s patronage of the prostitution agency, Emperor’s Club V.I.P., came to light after prosecutors charged four people with operating the service. They said the governor was intercepted on a federal wiretap arranging payments and an encounter with a prostitute in a Washington hotel room last month. The affidavit referred to a Client 9 and did not identify Mr. Spitzer by name, but law enforcement officials said that Client 9 was the governor.

Investigators reviewing the scope of Mr. Spitzer’s involvement with prostitutes said on Tuesday that just in the past year he had had more than a half-dozen meetings with them and had paid tens of thousands of dollars to the ring, one law enforcement official said.

A person with knowledge of the service’s operations said that Mr. Spitzer had begun meeting with the prostitutes of the Emperor’s Club about eight months ago and had had encounters in Dallas as well as Washington. A law enforcement official said Mr. Spitzer also had an encounter with a prostitute in Florida. On some trips of several days’ duration, Mr. Spitzer scheduled more than one visit with a prostitute, this person said.

In his Washington visit with the prostitute, Mr. Spitzer is said to have used an alias to book one of his rooms at the Mayflower Hotel, the name of a close friend, the financier George Fox.

Mr. Fox released a statement yesterday that said he was surprised and disappointed by Mr. Spitzer’s misuse of his name. “There is absolutely no connection between Mr. Fox and the governor’s alleged activity beyond the unauthorized use of his name,” the statement said.

Authorities were seeking the testimony of the woman known as Kristen, who worked for the Emperor’s Club service and is identified in the criminal complaint as having met with the governor last month in Washington, people briefed on the case said.

The woman is said in the complaint to have typically charged $1,000 an hour.

After her encounter with Client 9, the prostitute told the booker for the agency that it had gone well, and the booker told her that he, in an apparent reference to Client 9, sometimes asked the women “to do things that, like, you might not think were safe.”

Two of the defendants from the escort service were still being held in federal custody on Tuesday. Two other employees, who have been released, declined to discuss their work for what has become a highly publicized business.

“We are too early in this complex investigation for me to make any comment,” said Marc Agnifilo, the lawyer representing one of the bookers, Temeka Lewis.

Mr. Spitzer, who has three daughters, offered a general apology to his family and the people of New York on Monday, but did not address the specific allegations.

Reporting was contributed by Ian Urbina, Sewell Chan, Jo Becker, Cara Buckley, Russ Buettner, Nicholas Confessore, Lisa W. Foderaro, Kate Hammer, C. J. Hughes, Andrew Jacobs, Serge F. Kovaleski, Trymaine Lee, Jennifer Mascia, Mike McIntire, Jeremy W. Peters, Michael Powell and William K. Rashbaum.


http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/12/nyregion/12cnd-resign.html?_r=1&hp&oref=sloginspan

[DevotedToAMC]

I honestly think that this is for the best

[Sylph]

Disgraced NY governor won't need new job


By DAVID B. CARUSO, Associated Press Writer


The scion of a wealthy Manhattan real estate developer, Spitzer is a millionaire who could easily live off his share of his father's real estate business.

But that doesn't mean there won't be financial wrinkles ahead for Spitzer, who announced his resignation Wednesday after becoming ensnared in a prostitution scandal.

If he were to lose his law license, his ability to return to private law practice might be compromised. There's also the possibility that his wife could divorce her cheating husband and walk away with a chunk of the family fortune.

"Any judge who is going to decide this case is going to bend over backward to give her a break, considering what she's been through," said Albert Momjian, a prominent Philadelphia divorce lawyer.

Silda Wall Spitzer gave up a lucrative career in corporate law in 1994, the year that her husband made his first run for public office. Since then, she has worked unpaid jobs in philanthropy and founded a charity called Children for Children.

Spitzer's fall may have one indirect financial benefit. He will probably have to give up what appears to be his most expensive vice: high-priced prostitutes.

When the scandal broke, allegations surfaced that he had shelled out $4,300 to a call girl the night before Valentine's Day. A law enforcement official speaking on condition of anonymity later told The Associated Press that Spitzer was a regular customer who spent as much as $80,000 on a call-girl service over several years.

Until this week, the governor's Mr. Clean image extended to his spending, too. His staffers always boasted that their millionaire boss was a frugal guy who owned only a few pairs of shoes and drove a minivan.

"He was certainly not free with the dollars. He was very, very careful," said Hank Sheinkopf, a New York political consultant who worked on Spitzer's first two campaigns. "This is not the kind of guy who would take $50,000 out of his own bank account one weekend and blow it in Atlantic City."

Spitzer could have afforded many more luxuries. He reported $1.9 million in income to the IRS in 2006, according to his last publicly available tax return.

Not including last year, his earnings have been $14.9 million since 1998, and that total only hints at his family's wealth. His father, Bernard Spitzer, is said to be worth at least $500 million.

Spitzer's tax returns show that a majority of his income comes from rents collected on apartments and shops owned by the family. As governor, he earned $179,000 a year.

For years, the family spent weekends in a modest, rented home in Columbia County, south of Albany. The Spitzers recently paid $4 million to buy the entire 160-acre property.

The family's main residence continues to be a luxurious Fifth Avenue apartment in a tower built by his father in 1968. Spitzer lives there rent-free, courtesy of his father, who owns at least 10 such apartment towers.

When his three children were younger, Spitzer shelled out nearly $50,000 a year for nannies. Now the kids attend the Horace Mann School, where tuition exceeds $29,000 per student — nearly $100,000 in education expenses alone.

Spitzer and his wife have also given generously to charity, donating $474,509 between 2000 and 2006.

All of those spending habits pale in comparison to what Spitzer spent on politics: He financed his losing 1994 and winning 1998 campaigns for state attorney general with millions of dollars in personal loans. Much of that debt was retired when the governor sold his share of a family owned apartment building back to his father.

If there is a divorce, Silda Spitzer would likely be entitled to half of whatever assets the family acquired during their 20-year marriage — although discussion of a split may be premature.

Silda Spitzer stood next to her husband when he announced his resignation Wednesday and some observers said they believe the marriage may survive.

"She has grounds for 50 different divorces here," said Raoul Felder, a divorce lawyer and state judicial board chairman who lived in Spitzer's apartment building for 19 years, and later feuded with the governor over an off-color book he co-wrote with the comic Jackie Mason.

"But will she stick? I think she will," Felder said. "She's stood by him so far."

___

Associated Press investigative researcher Randy Herschaft contributed to this report.

(This version CORRECTS the spelling of Columbia County, not Colombia.)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080312/ap_on_...spitzer_s_money

[Noel]

Thanks for posting this. What a piece of scum and how horrible for his wife to actually stand there by his side while he admitted to this scandal. I know that Hillary Clinton went through the same type of embarrassment as well...but still. I couldn't have the courage enough to stand beside him like that. Bless her heart.

A bathhouse brothel, perhaps?

[Sylph]

No problems, Noel. I'm really, really sorry for his wife, too. That was an Earth-shattering discovery for her.

[Kwing42]

Makes you wonder what goes through people's minds.

If I were his wife, whether I supported him or not, I would make him go up alone in public....and deal with me later~!

[Toups]

He overpaid - the call girl wasn't even hot.

[DevotedToAMC]

LOL so true Toups ....I just loved it when I saw that the GOP in the New York legislature wanted to impeach him over a blowjob the same way the GOP tried to do it to Clinton ten years ago. Haven't they realized it never works?

But, all kidding aside, there are other issues that lead me to say he should resign (the money laundering)....and, if you look at his wife, you wonder why he would have an affair on her. She is quite attractive and also looks to be like a down to Earth woman. The hypocrisy of him prosecuting prostitutes as Attorney General only to now sleep with one baffles me.

Let's hope this new NY governor does a good job...aside from this issue, Spitzer was a rather good governor of the state. Much more of an improvement over the predecessor (Pa-tacky....it is spelled Pataki but I misspell it because he was tacky).

[DevotedToAMC]

LOL so true Toups ....I just loved it when I saw that the GOP in the New York legislature wanted to impeach him over a blowjob the same way the GOP tried to do it to Clinton ten years ago. Haven't they realized it never works?

But, all kidding aside, there are other issues that lead me to say he should resign (the money laundering)....and, if you look at his wife, you wonder why he would have an affair on her. She is quite attractive and also looks to be like a down to Earth woman. The hypocrisy of him prosecuting prostitutes as Attorney General only to now sleep with one baffles me.

Let's hope this new NY governor does a good job...aside from this issue, Spitzer was a rather good governor of the state. Much more of an improvement over the predecessor (Pa-tacky....it is spelled Pataki but I misspell it because he was tacky).

[EricaKane70]

Why do these women keep taking these notorious cheaters back, my god have some dignity and dump these men. If they actually think their husbands are gonna stay faithful they are living in a dream world, they might stay faithful for a while and then they will just go back to cheating. I would consider forgiving my husband if it was a one time thing, but cheating with a prostitute, being addicted to sex, and cheating with numerous women is another matter you might could forgive them but I definantly wouldn't want them back.

[Sylph]

Prostitute Ashley Alexandra Dupre behind Eliot Spitzer sex scandal cashes in

The call girl known as Kristen travelled by train from New York to Washington to meet Eliot Spitzer in an hotel

James Bone in New York

The call-girl who brought down the Governor of New York moved yesterday to use her new-found celebrity to boost her flagging singing career.

Ashley Alexandra Dupré, a struggling singer, uploaded a new track to Amie Street, an online music-seller, hours after she was exposed as the prostitute Kristen talking on tape about the disgraced Eliot Spitzer.

Ms Dupré apparently hopes to cash in on her notoriety with sales of her CD Unspoken Words. At about midnight local time on Wednesday she logged on to the website to upload Move Ya Body, a second track from the album. Move Ya Body and the first track, Can You Handle Me, Boy?, quickly surged to the site’s maximum price of 98 cents (49p), based on popular demand. Before the news broke, Can You Handle Me, Boy? had been selling at 9 cents. “This is definitely the most traffic we have had,” Joshua Boltuch, a spokesman, told The Times. He said that the demand- driven prices of her songs had risen just as fast as or faster than major artists selling through the site.

More than four million people viewed Ms Dupré’s MySpace page before it was taken down yesterday, and hundreds of thousands downloaded her songs from there.

Penthouse magazine said it would consider offering her a cover shot. Diane Silberstein, the publisher, said that Penthouse would make a photo shoot “worth her while”. Ms Dupré, a 22-year-old former child gymnast, was exposed by The New York Times as the “American, petite, very pretty brunette” prostitute called Kristen caught on a phone-tap talking about a tryst with Mr Spitzer in the Mayflower Hotel, Washington, on the eve of Valentine’s Day.

School friends where she grew up in New Jersey described her as the class beauty. “She never dated anyone in our school. She was never slutty. She would date older guys,” a 22-year-old woman identified only as Stephanie told the New York Post. “I thought she always had a good personality, and she was a gorgeous, gorgeous girl,” Chris Minardi, 23, told the New York Daily News. Bill Coyne, who played Danny to her Sandy in a school production of Grease, said: “She is naturally just a sweet, sweet person; kind spirit.”

Carolyn Capalbo, Ms Dupré’s mother, told The New York Times that she was “shell-shocked” when her daughter called to tell her that she had been working as an escort and had got into trouble with the law. “She is a very bright girl who can handle someone like the governor,” Ms Capalbo said. “But she also is a 22-year-old, not a 32-year-old or a 42-year-old, and she got involved in something much larger than her.”


http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article3548864.ece

[Sylph]

Eliot Spitzer - an endorsement from hell



On May 14 last year Eliot Spitzer endorsed Hillary Clinton for president, saying she was someone who had "proven herself time and again."

In those days she was seen as the inevitable Democratic nominee and the Governor of New York was yet another good catch for Mrs Clinton.

It hasn't quite turned out like that.

The sexual scandal which today forced Spitzer's resignation is serving as an unfortunate reminder of those surrounding the White House in years past. America, even more Britain, is a puritan culture where sex sins are rarely forgiven and never forgotten.

The comedian, David Letterman, has been getting some predictably cheap laughs with his top ten excuses list for Spitzer. Number one: "I thought Bill Clinton legalised this years ago."

Other commentators are comparing shots of Spitzer's wife (poor woman) standing by her man with those of Bill and Hillary in similar circumstances - presumably one of those moments when she proved herself "time and again".

Nor was he much help to Mrs Clinton when she needed it most, apparently refusing to campaign for her in Ohio last week because he was too busy (doing what, exactly?)

But when the history of this election is written, it may be that the turning point will be identified as the debate on October 31 when Mrs Clinton appeared to give two contradictory answers to a question about whether she supported giving driver's licenses to illegal immigrants.

This revealed the first chink in her armour and allowed opponents including Barack Obama to suggest she did not have a principled stand on key policies.

The author of the driver licenses plan? Eliot Spitzer.

http://timesonline.typepad.com/uselections/2008/03/eliot-spitzer-.html