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March 17, 2008 at 10:55:30
by Richard Clark Page 1 of 2 page(s) |
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The case against Eliot Spitzer did not start with the report of a crime. Rather it started with a decision to look into Spitzer’s financial dealings to see if any dirt could be spotted and then developed into something consequential. It was not the amount of money being transferred that triggered interest. What triggered not just interest but action was the person initiating the transfers, for he was a powerful Democratic governor who just might be, by this means, removed from office. Several reports about this case have suggested that it is somehow routine for prosecutors to go through the financial records of public officials to look for evidence of corruption. But in the absence of specific grounds justifying the investigation (for instance, an informant complaining about a bribe), prosecutors have no such authority. Investigators in this case appear to have been investigating Spitzer in the hopes of finding something compromising. Nailing Spitzer had become a politically-based priority. By contrast, in the case of Republican Congressman David Vitter, federal prosecutors had proceeded against a prostitution ring yet showed little interest in the customer list that included a former high-ranking Bush Administration official (Randall Tobias, director of the U.S. Agency for International Development) and a U.S. Senator (David Vitter, Republican of Louisiana). In fact, the prosecutors' conduct in the "D.C. Madam" case was remarkably deferential to the public figures involved. Vitter got a slap on the wrist and that was the end of it. So why the double standard when it’s a Democrat that gets caught in the net? The feds had built their case against the prostitution ring and were ready to make arrests, but it seems they held back in hopes they could get enough incriminating evidence to maximally slam Spitzer. They could have gone with the announcement about the prostitution ring back in January. But they didn’t. They waited until they could get permission from Attorney General Mukase to tap Spitzer’s phone calls – they got that permission that same month – and then proceeded to get enough on Spitzer to remove him from office.
However, in the process of the investigation, some basic prosecutorial rules were violated:
The feds prepared pleadings which were filled with salacious detail that served no purpose other than to assure the eventual public humiliation of Spitzer.
Then they tipped the press to the fact that “Client 9” was Eliot Spitzer. Over the next 48 hours, they filled the press with copious additional details surrounding Spitzer, many of them lurid.
All of this made marvelous copy for the tabloids. But it also violated basic rules of prosecutorial ethics and can only be explained as part of a partisan political endeavor: to take down a prominent political figure of the opposition party.
Most of the foregoing commentary is based on a report by law school professor Scott Horton at http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/03/hbc-90002624
Exactly how did the case against Spitzer get launched? And was he really brought down by a politically motivated investigation?
An IRS office was tipped off by Republican officials at various banks that Spitzer was often depositing a few thousand dollars in different accounts within the space of a day or two. Realizing it just might have a political tiger by the tail, the Republicans at the IRS then contacted the Department of Justice and the FBI. At the Republican-controlled DOJ, the Public Integrity Section quickly launched an investigation. It’s not surprising that they jumped at this possibility of nailing Spitzer since they had already gone after six times more Democratic politicians than Republicans, mostly in conjunction with wiping out the Democrats’ prospects in upcoming elections.
With a little detective work and tapped phone calls, the Republicans at DOJ soon discovered that Spitzer was seeing high-priced call girls. This is a petty misdemeanor in most jurisdictions, but the DOJ went ahead and constructed an elaborate and costly sting operation, for the express purpose of getting the goods on one of the country's most powerful Democratic politicians -- who happened to be committing a petty, if potentially very embarrassing, crime.
In the course of the sting, Spitzer made a big mistake: He paid a call girl to travel from New York to Washington. This put him in technical violation of an 85-year-old federal law, the Mann Act, which has a long history of being used for politically motivated prosecutions of the worst sort, such as those directed years ago at the famous Negro boxer Jack Johnson and also Jewish movie legend Charlie Chaplin.
Only then was the existence of the investigation leaked to the media.
What we're dealing with here is a classic abuse of the criminal justice system: a plan to use a sting to take down a powerful political enemy.
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Yeah Richard, you're probably right
On the other hand, the Bill Clintons and Eliot Spitzers of the world owe it to their high public profile to keep some elemental and basic control over their actions. They know they are targets. Spitzer apparently operated over a long period of time with extraordinary arrogance. This is an incredibly unforgiving country when it comes to perceived moral failures. In Europe they just shake their heads in disbelief that we can hang an adulterer out to dry and allow the criminality of the current administration. But that's the way we are and Spitzer and Clinton should have known that. "Ready or not, here we come!" by Jim Freeman (108 articles, 53 quicklinks, 227 diaries, 386 comments) on Monday, Mar 17, 2008 at 12:30:40 PM
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Reply: Yes Spitzer and Clinton should have known better. But . .
. . that's beside the point I'm trying to make, which is that we apparently have a cabal of high-ranking officials at banks and various government agencies, including the Department of "Justice," who are now able to work together to remove high-ranking government officials from office, for political reasons. Remember what happened to Alabama Governor Don Siegelman? Remember the federal prosecutors who were canned either because they refused to go after Democratic officials who were not really guilty of anything, or because they went after Repugs who were probably guilty? When every high-ranking Democratic official knows that their phone conversations and emails are being recorded by the NSA, and all their financial transactions can be monitored by Republican enemies, we are well on our way to fascism my friend. by Richard Clark (30 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 101 comments [2 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Monday, Mar 17, 2008 at 3:33:16 PM
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Reply: Point well made
We're back to Caesar's wife and it's not where we should be, given our past blindness to Eisenhower, FDR, LBJ and Kennedy's dalliances. We are an international joke for these Victorian double-standards. Having said that, it sure doesn't help Spitzer's devastated wife. by Jim Freeman (108 articles, 53 quicklinks, 227 diaries, 386 comments) on Monday, Mar 17, 2008 at 5:37:22 PM
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What some Wall Streeters had to gain from 'getting' Spitzer
Alexander Cockburn asks: Did Wall Street nail Gov Spitzer? The Wall Street titan Ken Langone was a former target of Eliot Spitzer and he had promised to launch ‘a holy war’ against Spitzer. It looks like this was it, says Alexander Cockburn. “Was there a right-wing conspiracy to nail Governor Eliot Spitzer, above and beyond his own diligent efforts in the same cause? It certainly looks like it, the right-wingers in question very possibly hailing from Wall Street, whose ruling powers loathed Spitzer for his crusades against them when he was New York's attorney general. If threatened, Wall Street plays very dirty. So let's nose along the trail. First of all, it’s clear that the federal investigators' probe _started_ with Spitzer, not the prostitution ring. Spitzer's bank wire transfers led them to the Emperors Club. Spitzer divided his $10,000 transfer down into smaller units, _allegedly_ triggering a federal probe. But it strains credulity to believe that North Fork Bank's 'Suspicious Activity Report' on a well-known client immediately aroused the interest of the government clerk scrutinizing the hundreds of thousands of SARs churning through his computer in the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) watch-post in Long Island. The official version of the story has the IRS man noting Spitzer's name, then passing the information up the food chain to the Justice Department, and the US Attorney’s office in Manhattan. Instead of the banks being curious on their own, what if the feds told the banks to report all of Spitzer's wire transfers to them? It does seem likely, and if that’s what happened, what we have here is a sting operation, which raises another pressing question: Who was it who first steered the feds in Spitzer's direction? And need we ask why? ================ Relevant here are Ken Langone’s remarks on CNBC last night, following Spitzer's resignation. The billionaire venture capitalist was a New York Stock Exchange board member whom Spitzer had gone after when he was attorney general. Langone later proclaimed he was launching "a holy war" against Spitzer. CNBC: "Would you say that you were surprised by this news?" Langone: "Not at all... I know for sure he went himself to a post office and bought $2,800 worth of mail orders to send to the hooker... I know somebody who was standing in back of him in line..." As a 20-year veteran of Wall Street emailed me a propos of Langone's remarks: "Spitzer's enemies on Wall Street probably hired private eyes to follow him. I know this to be standard operating procedure against Wall Street enemies." Spitzer's role as the sole target in this recruitment of investigative and prosecutorial manpower since July 2007 is evidenced by the malicious insertion in the prosecutor's indictment of a hint from the phone taps about his sexual preferences (reminiscent of Kenneth Starr's detailed disclosures about the minutiae of physical transactions between Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky). ================ Major Wall Street operators created the housing bubble, fixed the system of bogus AAA ratings, kept the debt off their balance sheets and prevented pricing transparency. As with the dot-com NASDAQ bubble of nearly a decade ago, there are perpetrators who should be facing criminal sanctions. Wall Street has nothing to fear for its sub-prime frauds from the Security Exchange Commission (SEC); the SEC has no criminal prosecutorial powers. But New York State does have the Martin Act, one of the most powerful criminal enforcement weapons in the country and used to great effect by attorney general Spitzer. In January of this year there were news stories about the current attorney general Andrew Cuomo using the Martin Act to go after the sub-prime corporate miscreants. Such an onslaught, with the backing of Gov Spitzer, was undoubtedly making Wall Street nervous. Hence the decision to take out Spitzer. by Richard Clark (30 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 101 comments [2 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Monday, Mar 17, 2008 at 3:38:23 PM
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Fascism
When Bush Jr.came into office we immediately went into Fascism101.How he spreads his disease into every vein and artery of the government is like a Black Plague spreading over the United States and is virtually unstoppable.It's disgusting how a democratic House and Congress can't rein in his reign of terror on the American Justice System,American People and his outright lies.Bush and Cheney should have never taken office just from their illegal stock trades,sweetheart deals-Halliburton-Both should not have reported to the White House-They should have reported to do a 20 year sentence for all their crimes.Volumes of Books have been written about these TRAITORS and LIARS and they are still there like a cancer on the American people just festering away and making everything they touch turn black and die.And can you believe i never got into politics until this scum came into office? by lupercio (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 5 comments) on Monday, Mar 17, 2008 at 7:11:32 PM
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The "UnTargeted
What I find interesting is that the media NEVER brings up the affair that G.W. Bush and Victor Ashe had, and their adulterous-bisexual relationship with Leola McConnell making the arrangements for the women who participated in the three-some. These affairs took place in Tennessee during the 1984 senate debates. Leola McConnell was paid $15,000 to arrange sexual liaisons involving bisexual men for G.W. She wrote an eBook about her BDSM experiences with Bush and Ashe, titled "Lustful Utterances". After the book came out, McConnell hasn't been seen or heard from by friends and family. If you want to read more, go to http://bushssecretlifein84.tripod.com/ by lucydavis (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 88 comments) on Tuesday, Mar 18, 2008 at 8:20:56 AM
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Two reasons Bushco might have gone after Spitzer
With thanks to Jim Fetzer whose observations and comments I used here as a kind of basis for what I came up with: -------------- If you buy the official story, “Revelations about Governor (Spitzer) Began in Routine Tax Inquiry” (The New York Times, March 11, 2008), then of course the situation looks like Spitzer was just extremely unlucky to have been caught (because of the suspicious nature of financial transactions intended to conceal his expenditures for high-priced prostitutes). But if you think about it, that is a most _unlikely_ explanation of how the man happened to get caught. Why? Because the sums involved here – two or three thousand each, spent by a well known multimillionaire – are not sufficiently substantial to have drawn attention – except to someone who was looking for possible dirt on Spitzer. And the great degree to which emphasis has been placed on this explanation suggests that someone’s plan was to discover dirt about Spitzer. The only question is: who? Who gave the order to keep an eye on Spitzer’s financial transactions? Second likely motive: For Spitzer to have been the object of a Bush vendetta, there would of course have had to have been some very good reason to give that order that would lead to the man’s removal from office -- just as in the case of Joseph Wilson or Admiral Fallon. And indeed, all three men (Spitzer, Wilson and Fallon) directly challenged basic tenets of the Bush administration, and did so in a way that Bush and Cheney found threatening. So it is quite significant that just one month before his outing, Spitzer published a column in The Washington Post called “Predatory Lenders' Partner in Crime,” February 14, 2008, in which he explained that the administration’s own policies of (a) deliberate regulatory neglect and (b) favoring cronies, were major factors that contributed to the home mortgage crisis, perhaps the greatest economic catastrophe of our time. It is no leap of logic to infer that Bush must have been infuriated and, as in the case of Wilson and Fallon, he probably wanted to strike out in retaliation. That Spitzer’s fall should happen so soon thereafter, suggests that the decision to ‘get’ him was made partly out of a desire to punish another person for pointing to his administration’s dereliction of duty. And why is he going to such lengths to protect the telecommunications industry? He wants to be able to remain free to gather “intelligence” about those who might criticize or impeach him, his policies, and his administration. by Richard Clark (30 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 101 comments [2 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Tuesday, Mar 18, 2008 at 10:12:06 PM
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Reply: Think of my last post as a commentary on Fetzer's piece
Please read Jim Fetzer's original version of what I said in my last post. Here's the link to it: http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_jim_fetz_080313_bush_vendetta_3f.htm by Richard Clark (30 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 101 comments [2 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Wednesday, Mar 19, 2008 at 12:18:36 AM
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Mortaging America's future for a quick buck
It's one of the most amazing displays of journalistic incompetence and malpractice in recent memory. Watch the great video about this, here: http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/291.html by Richard Clark (30 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 101 comments [2 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Saturday, Mar 22, 2008 at 11:19:57 AM
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W. Madsen says Spitzer was targeted for 911-related reasons
WMR has learned from sources involved with the Fresh Kills recovery by Richard Clark (30 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 101 comments [2 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Friday, Mar 28, 2008 at 7:40:59 PM
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