The KGB had a slogan: “Show me the man, and I’ll find you his crime.”
Which is to say that just because New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer hung himself by becoming Client 9 in the federal complaint against an alleged prostitution ring doesn’t mean that a Republican-controlled Justice Department wasn’t out to get him.
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Spitzer, the soon-to-be-former governor who liked to refer to himself as a “steamroller,” was a constant thorn in the side of New York Republicans, not to mention various powerful interests on Wall Street.
Questions about the origins of the probe into his relationship with Emperor’s Club VIP have mounted since it has become clear that Spitzer was always the bull’s-eye for federal investigators. His involvement was not discovered in the course of an examination of an alleged prostitution ring, but the other way around.
Newsday’s Robert Kessler reports that the probe began after Spitzer’s branch bank in Manhattan reported him to the Internal Revenue Service for engaging in suspicious currency transactions.
Kessler quotes unnamed sources saying that after the governor transferred $10,000 by breaking it into smaller amounts, he called the bank, identified in other reports as North Fork, asking that his name be removed from the transactions.
Spitzer broke down the transfers to smaller amounts apparently to get around federal regulations requiring the reporting of the transfer of $10,000 or more, the sources said. The regulations are aimed at helping spot possible illegal business activities, such as frauds or drug deals.
Just how the former prosecutor thought he would avoid raising red flags, especially given how many in the banking world reviled him, is a clue to his hubris or perhaps, his utter detachment from reality. Sources told Kessler that after receiving that call, the bank identified in other reports as North Fork filed a Suspicious Activity Report with the Internal Revenue Service.
But that still leaves open the question of how and why federal investigators pounced on the report given that a million a year are filed with the Internal Revenue Service. The Wall Street Journal reports that many banks now examine transactions involving so-called “politically exposed persons” - politicians, judges, prosecutors and their families - to ensure they’re not used to hide ill-gotten gains.
Still, left-leaning bloggers have wondered whether a Republican governor in the same circumstances would have gotten the same treatment, including leaks of whole chunks of the case to media organizations before a prosecution was actually brought. Those questions grew after The Washington Post revealed today that weeks before the Feb. 13 assignation described in court papers, the FBI had staked Spitzer out at the same Washington hotel. The Post says that an officer from the detail watched the governor’s room from across the hall, through a cracked door. But no call girl appeared that night.
There’s no question that the mere mention of the name of the powerful Democrat would be catnip to any ambitious investigator, Spitzer’s ever-growing list of enemies or for that matter, a Republican apparatchik.
But the Journal also notes that the FBI seldom uses wiretaps to make these cases; search warrants usually suffice. Wiretap applications generally are reserved for serious crimes, such as drug, weapons and terrorism-related cases. There typically are no more than 1,400 wiretaps in use nationwide at any given time.
Scott Horton, a New York attorney known for his human rights work and a frequent critic of the Bush Administration, sees a political agenda at work. He calls the Public Integrity Section at the Justice Department, which had a role in this case, “one of the most politicized offices in the Justice Department in the last five or six years.”
In his blog at Harper’s Magazine, Horton calls on the department to give a full accounting of why they were looking into Spitzer’s financial transactions. “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,” he wrote.
Horton cites the oversight of Alice S. Fisher, chief of the Justice Department’s criminal division, who oversees the Public Integrity Section. Fisher, who is a protege of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff after first working for him as deputy special counsel to the Senate Whitewater investigation looking into the land deals of Bill and Hillary Clinton. Fisher, he notes, is being criticized in the handling of another case – the prosecution of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, recently reviewed in a 60 Minutes investigation.
While Siegelman was governor, the U.S. Justice Department launched multiple investigations that went on year after year until, finally, a jury convicted Siegelman of bribery, according to the report. Now, 52 former state attorneys-general have asked Congress to investigate whether the prosecution was pursued not because of a crime but because of politics.
“All that is not to say that Spitzer is not a crook,” Horton said. “But the integrity of our justice system hangs on the investigation of crime, not of specific people.”
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3 Comments
#1. John 03.12.2008
Nice job on this story…
#2. Marks 03.12.2008
Just another corrupt Democrat.
Wait till the sex scandals come out on HUSSEIN Obama in the next several months.
#3. Ayat 03.16.2008
It’s easy to miss the blessing sometimes hidden in what appears to be a failure or loss. I am grateful you were not murdered instead. Perhaps in
this light, the governor will find it easier to forgive himself. My heart goes out to him no less than to his family.
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