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CNN sex scandal report omits Spitzer

Chris Ariens:

A TVNewser reader Tweeted at us today:

@tvnewser @HowardKurtz: Did CNN really exclude Spitzer from Malveaux package on Sex Scandals & Politics? Hmm..

The answer: yes it did.

Suzanne Malveaux‘s story, which aired at 2:30pmET, made mention or showed images of politicians ranging from John F. Kennedy to John Edwards; also former Governors James McGreevey and Mark Sanford, and former Sen. Larry Craig and current Sen. David Vitter, former Pres. Bill Clinton, and 2012 presidential candidate Newt Gingrich — their private indiscretions made very public. But no mention of Eliot Spitzer who resigned as Governor of New York after it was revealed he had patronized a prostitution service. Spitzer now hosts CNN’s 7pm show “In the Arena.” We’ve learned the producer/editor on the story, who use their own judgment on what to use and what not to use, chose not to include Spitzer in the story.

Spitzer does appear on a CNN web site slideshow, but it's still a pretty egregious omission. After all, what Spizer did was actually illegal, not just unseemly, even if he caught a break from the prosecutors who decided not to charge him. Plus, of course, Spitzer was a prosecutor charged with oversight of criminal cases and the top law enforcement officer of the State of New York when some of the illegal shenanigans took place. So you could make a pretty good case that Spitzer's a worse offender than those who stories CNN decided were worth dredging up.

Harvard Club's got higher standards than Harvard University

David Lat:

In April, we reported that Eliot Spitzer — former governor and attorney general of New York, until he resigned from office in the wake of a prostitution scandal — was applying for admission to the Harvard Club of New York. Spitzer graduated from Harvard Law School in 1984.

Well, the jury has reached a verdict for the ex-prosecutor — and the news for Spitzer is not good. His application was rejected earlier this year, according to an article by Sewell Chan and Nicholas Confessore of the New York Times.

So what did Spitzer, famously known as Client No. 9, have to say about his rejection?

Through a spokesperson, Lisa Linden, Spitzer described the decision as “disappointing.” Linden added: “Last year, Harvard asked Eliot to speak on ethics at the school. He supports the institution financially. It would seem that whoever made this decision at the club is not on the same page as the university itself.”

It's kind of appalling to learn that Harvard University lets Spitzer speak on ethics. It's almost as bad as letting Bill Lerach speak on legal ethics, as some law schools have done. Setting aside Spitzer's penchant for kinky and unsafe sex, his conduct as attorney general was fraught with borderline ethical conduct and, of course, there was Troopergate when he was governor. The guy is a slimeball and it's good to see somebody finally tell him to crawl back under the rock from whence he came.

Spitzer

An Eliot Spitzer screed excoriating the US Chamber of Commerce for various alleged misdeeds (which mostly involve not bending over and taking whatever the government wants to disk out), prompts this wonderful bit of invective from Tim Cavanaugh:

When Your Neighbor Loses His Job It's A Recession. When You Screw A Whore Behind Your Wife's Back, Get Caught, And Lose Your Job, It's A Catastrophic Economic Meltdown.

Disgraced criminal Eliot Spitzer has for reasons unknown been occupying a columnist spot at Slate.com for some period of time. His column is always dull, hysterical, and powered by a level of self-satisfaction that is undiminished by any apparent shame over the pain the columnist has caused not only for his own family but for a good Jersey girl trying to make a living by providing an honest service. ...

It's unfortunate that he will be remembered only for committing a crime that in any normal society -- that is, a society where puritanical f**kfaces like Eliot Spitzer had no power over others -- would not be a crime at all. But by bringing up the economy and business regulation, Spitzer reminds us of a much more serious offense: his  efforts to make New York a more hostile place to do business. According to Forbes, the Empire State's business climate moved steadily downward during Spitzer's abrupt tenure. That has real effects on job creation and the well being of New York residents. Unlike his inept, socks-on sexual stylings -- which merely offended good taste and set back the greater cause of female orgasm -- Spitzer's attack on business actually had some victims.

Bruno on Spitzer

Republican New York Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno was the fellow who NY Governor Eliot Spitzer's administration spied. In the W$J, he writes:

New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer is now traveling the state trying to put a scandal behind him that risks enveloping his administration. It's going to be a hard task.

Here's what we know, thanks to some enterprising reporting by the New York Post and an investigation by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo: Two close advisers to the governor apparently used the New York State Police to carry out a political smear campaign against me by creating documents designed to generate negative press reports about me. And it nearly worked. ...

Mr. Spitzer is not shy about using threats and verbal abuse against those who oppose him. Wall Street Journal readers will remember that John Whitehead, formerly chairman of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation, detailed on theses pages a bizarre and threatening phone call from then New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer in 2005. The call came after Mr. Whitehead wrote an article for this newspaper critical of Mr. Spitzer. There have been profane and abusive phone calls to members of the Senate and Assembly. And, of course, the governor also admitted that he lied to Michael Goodwin of the Daily News about whether his father helped bankroll his campaign for attorney general in 1998.

In light of these incidents, New Yorkers are beginning to raise serious questions about the governor's temperament. And all of this helps place the "Troopergate" scandal in context. This most recent abuse of power represents an intentional effort to damage me politically and--by extension--to destroy the Republican majority in the state Senate.

Bruno's right, of course. Spitzer is a bad actor whose wings desperately need clipping. What's interesting, however, is the quietly bipartisan nature of the attacks on Spitzer. The Washington Examiner recently editorialized:

Deep sea fisherman often cut up smaller fish, throw the "chum" into the water, then catch bigger fish attracted by the free food. The result is often a feeding frenzy among sharks in the vicinity. New York Gov. Elliot Spitzer is now experiencing what it's like to be political chum, a reversal of fortune that his many victims must find fitting. The fisherman is Andrew Cuomo, Spitzer's successor as New York's attorney general. In a state long known for remorseless Machiavellians willing to do whatever is necessary to get to the top, Cuomo may be the only man with more intense ambitions than Spitzer.

The son of a previous New York governor, Cuomo recently made public his evidence that Spitzer used state employees to generate a false charge against state senate majority leader Joe Bruno, a Republican, with whom Spitzer was clashing. Cuomo clearly hopes to incite a feeding frenzy against Spitzer by those other well-known man-eaters, the Empire State's news media. Said frenzy would remove a huge obstacle blocking Cuomo's path to the governor's mansion.

It would also quash Spitzer's presidential ambitions, of course. Which would be a very good thing.

Spitzer, 18 USC 1001, and a Question for New York Lawyers

The W$J reports:

With the disclosure this week that close aides misused state police in an effort to damage a Republican rival, [NY Governor Eliot] Spitzer is facing the same kind of high-profile scrutiny that he was famous for inflicting upon others -- from Wall Street executives to radio conglomerates -- as New York's attorney general. In a role reversal, the aggressive Mr. Spitzer now is on the defensive and vowing to make amends. ...

While the report by [Democratic] Attorney General Andrew Cuomo found that no laws had been broken, it found that a close Spitzer aide schemed to create and give detailed reports to the media showing that Mr. Bruno had been using state aircraft to attend fund- raisers and other political events, rather than for state business as Mr. Bruno had certified. ...

The report found that the governor's communications director, Darren Dopp, and his top liaison to the state police pressured the state police to create, and in some instances re-create, records of Mr. Bruno's use of state aircraft and police escorts.

The report also suggested that the governor's staff gave a false story to investigators to explain why the information was being gathered, saying they were acting on a Freedom of Information Act request from a newspaper.

How can it possibly be the case that lying to investigators and pressuring police to falsify records broke no laws? Does NY have no equivalent of the federal provision in 18 USC 1001 that criminally penalizes, by up to five years in prison, any person who "knowingly and willfully? ... (2) makes any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation; or (3) makes or uses any false writing or document knowing the same to contain any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or entry." I'm no fan of 18 USC 1001, but it's just the sort of statute Spitzer would have loved back when he was NY Attorney General.

Any NY lawyers in the audience know whether there's a NY version of section 1001? Or if there's any other NY law on which Spitzer might find himself hanging?

Eliot Spitzer is a Thug

The NYT repo rts:

Gov. Eliot Spitzer vowed on Wednesday to fight any State Senate inquiry into his administration?s internal operations, even as Republican senators were laying the groundwork for an investigation that could lead to subpoenas of top officials. ... The governor has maintained that he was misled by his staff and knew nothing about the effort to discredit Mr. Bruno. But two of his closest aides refused to be interviewed by the attorney general?s investigators, intensifying suspicion, especially among the governor?s critics, that Mr. Spitzer and his staff had not been forthright. ...

?The governor?s people refused, people at the highest level, they refused to sit and answer questions,? [Bruno] said. ?What did they do? They made a little statement. And these are the people who are the closest to the governor, who are governing the state.?

Can you imagine what Attorney General Spitzer would have done to a corporate CEO who told two of his executives to stonewall and who tried to fight off an investigation? Actually, we know exactly what Spitzer would have done:

Former Goldman Sachs Chairman John Whitehead said Thursday that New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer threatened him during an April phone call for writing an open letter critical of Spitzer's attacks on prominent insurance executive Maurice "Hank" Greenberg. ...

"Mr. Whitehead, it's now a war between us and you've fired the first shot," Whitehead quoted Spitzer as saying. "I will be coming after you. You will pay the price. This is only the beginning and you will pay dearly for what you have done. You will wish you had never written that letter," Whitehead claimed Spitzer said.

Spitzer is a Nixon-like thug.

Spitzer

The W$J reports:

With the disclosure this week that close aides misused state police in an effort to damage a Republican rival, [NY Governor Eliot] Spitzer is facing the same kind of high-profile scrutiny that he was famous for inflicting upon others -- from Wall Street executives to radio conglomerates -- as New York's attorney general. In a role reversal, the aggressive Mr. Spitzer now is on the defensive and vowing to make amends. ...

While the report by [Democratic] Attorney General Andrew Cuomo found that no laws had been broken, it found that a close Spitzer aide schemed to create and give detailed reports to the media showing that Mr. Bruno had been using state aircraft to attend fund-raisers and other political events, rather than for state business as Mr. Bruno had certified. ...

The report found that the governor's communications director, Darren Dopp, and his top liaison to the state police pressured the state police to create, and in some instances re-create, records of Mr. Bruno's use of state aircraft and police escorts.

The report also suggested that the governor's staff gave a false story to investigators to explain why the information was being gathered, saying they were acting on a Freedom of Information Act request from a newspaper.

How can it possibly be the case that lying to investigators and pressuring police to falsify records broke no laws? Does NY have no equivalent of the federal provision in 18 USC 1001 that criminally penalizes, by up to five years in prison, any person who "knowingly and willfully— ... (2) makes any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation; or (3) makes or uses any false writing or document knowing the same to contain any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or entry." I'm no fan of 18 USC 1001, but it's just the sort of statute Spitzer would have loved back when he was NY Attorney General.

Spitzer = Nixon?

Here at PB.com, we have been ignoring our old bête noire Eliot Spitzer. Once he moved up from NY AG to Governor, he could no longer do quite so much damage to the US economy, so he passed off our radar screen. If the people of New York were dumb enough to entrust themselves to Spitzer, that was their problem.

Well, he's back. From the Law Blog:

Many on Wall Street must be reveling in the irony. It appears New York Gov Eliot Spitzer, who became famous for his no-holds-barred prosecution of alleged corporate misdeeds, is enmeshed in a mess of his own.

According to a report released yesterday, the governor’s aides used the state police to gather information about Spitzer’s chief political rival, Joseph Bruno, New York’s state senate majority leader.

My gosh. If Spitzer were a Republican, people would be making comparisons to Nixon and calling for impeachment. (Actually, Spitzer reminds me a lot of Nixon, but that's a story for another day.) To be sure, at the moment, Spitzer's aides are taking the fall. But as the W$J points out:

At a minimum, however, it seems implausible that Mr. Dopp, the Governor's close adviser and communications director, would undertake a campaign to destroy the leader of the political opposition without his boss's tacit support. Mr. Spitzer's role needs to be more fully investigated and aired, and, who knows, maybe even reporters other than those at the New York Post will follow the story.

Speaking of the Post, here's some of their reporting:

The scathing, 53-page report detailed a months-long scheme in which Dopp, Howard, and Felton - at times with the partial knowledge of Spitzer chief of staff Richard Baum - used the State Police to gather and create misleading and inaccurate records on Bruno's use of state aircraft to travel from Albany to Manhattan in hopes of showing he was using the flights strictly for political purposes, a possibly illegal action. ...

The report confirmed a week's worth of investigative stories in The Post beginning July 5 that found aides to Spitzer, including Dopp, used the State Police as, in effect, a spy agency as part of a broad conspiracy aimed at destroying Bruno.

Nixonian really is the word that comes to mind. The Post opines:

The governor - preposterously, given his personality - suggested the plot was all news to him.  ... Back when he was the scourge of Wall Street, would Spitzer for one minute have accepted such a defense - that he didn't know about a major political scheme carried out by his own top aides? One that included, to a degree, Chief of Staff Richard Baum?

Whether Spitzer knew about it or not, of course, the plot was clearly - indisputably - an abuse of power. (And conducted, it needs to be noted, in a clownishly inept manner.) ...

Certainly a plot like this is in sync with Spitzer's record - in his eight years as attorney general, and carrying over into his first half-year as governor. His nasty, hardball bullying - calling Bruno a "senile piece of s---" or telling state Sen. William Larkin he'll "cut [his] head off" - is of a piece with the plot against the majority leader.

Meanwhile, the always clueless NY Times is still blithely quoting Spitzer chief of staff Richard Baum - who had "partial knowledge" of the scheme to use police to "destroy" a political enemy of Spitzer:

“It’s who he is, and part of what’s great about him as a person and as governor,” Mr. Baum said.

In fairness, that quote's a little bit out of context. But still, it says something about the Times' biases.

Update: Slate calls me a "longtime Spitzer antagonist." Guilty as charged. See, e.g.,  Spitzer v. Grasso and Spitzer Goes over the Line. Also http://www.professorbainbridge.com/2003/09/can_you_be_a_co.html. And that's just a small sample.

Spitzer's Ethics

Bill Hammond in the NY Daily News on NY AG and gubernatorial candidate Eliot Spitzer:

Eliot Spitzer is running for governor as the best guy to clean up Albany, including its corrupt "pay-to-play" system of shaking down interest groups for campaign donations and other goodies. So what the heck is he doing jetting around on the Gulfstream of a Wyoming businessman who wants to run race tracks and build casinos in New York?

It's one thing for Spitzer to pile up money and endorsements from insiders. Fish gotta swim, pols gotta grub for cash. But accepting deeply discounted air travel from a gambling mogul doing lots of business with state government - as Spitzer and an aide did in May - is too cozy for comfort. The would-be Sheriff of Albany should be keeping a safe distance from favor seekers, not putting himself in a position where he owes them anything.

You'll recall that this is the same guy about whom the W$J reported:

Three civil settlements he struck in an unusual case against wealthy telecom executives and IPOs have allowed him to bestow more than $5 million in largess over the past several months to dozens of community groups across New York state. The recipients are intended as a sort of proxy for individual investors who allegedly suffered from the actions of the defendants, who were accused of profiting from undisclosed awards of sought-after initial public offerings from investment bankers seeking their business. ... But the groups receiving the windfall also represent voter constituencies that could be key to Mr. Spitzer's widely expected Democratic run for governor in 2006.

Mandle on Conason on Spitzer

At CT, Joe Mandle praises Joe Conason's review of Brooke Master's new bio of NY AG Eliot Spitzer:

[Spitzer] exposed widespread corruption, cronyism and immorality at the commanding heights of the American economy, exploding the myth of the self-regulating market.

Piffle. His attack on the mutual fund industry was "a gross abuse of prosecutorial power." "Just a quick overview of Spitzer's tactics over the past couple of years exposes the widespread abuse of authority and the rule of law in pursuing his popular agenda." He has consistently exhibited "egomania and serial disregard for due process." All in all, Spitzer has an impressive record of losing the Wall Street cases he actually takes to trial, conflicts of interest, abusing his prosecutorial powers for personal political gain, pushing his nose into areas that belong to the feds, higher mutual fund fees, using "the criminal law as an in terrorem weapon to force acceptance of industry-wide regulations," using litigation to regulate in ways that neither the state nor federal legislature chose to do, ignoring misconduct by political allies, and abusing the bizzare Martin Act.

Spitzer and Air America

I admit right off the bat that I have a complex about NY Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. But like the old joke goes, just because you're paranoid .... I firmly believe that everything he does his highly political and these days directed at being NY's next governor. So I'm curious: Will he risk annoying his base by going after liberal talk radio?

When I asked, "Where is Mr. Spitzer going with the Gloria Wise Boys and Girls Club investigation?" bells didn't quite ring for the young spokesman for New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer.

Then I said the magic words: "You know . . . the Air America thing?"

Bells chimed. At the moment, the spokesman said, "the office is reviewing the matter to determine if we have a role there."

If you buy argument, after all, this ought to be right up Spitzer's alley:

...the Air America Radio Network is a corporation, and this is a corporate scandal. It is one complete with the usual cast of overpaid, self-interested, millionaire wheeler-dealers whose primary objective in business is to wall themselves off from personal responsibility for their actions.

... The "inappropriate transactions" include a series of money transfers beginning in early 2004 from the accounts of the Gloria Wise [Boys & Girls] club to those of Progress Media, original owner of Air America, which at the time was scrambling to raise $30 million so it could get on the air in time to help unselect George W. Bush.

Details of the transfers remain vague. But most now believe the total was almost $900,000. The transfers - you'll note we assiduously are avoiding calling them "loans" - appear to have been arranged by Evan Cohen, who at the time was propitiously (for him and Air America) the development director for Gloria Wise and a founding director of the fledgling liberal talk-show network.

More on Spitzer

Dominic Basulto's fine TCS column is a must read; money quote:

Spitzer has attacked business practices that appear to skirt the boundary between black and white and, at the same time, attempted to build cases around rarely prosecuted activities. As the Wall Street Journal pointed out in a recent op-ed piece, though, "the criminalization of widely accepted business practices ex post facto is both unjust and offensive to the rule of law." In the case of Sihpol, it was the prosecution of illegal trading in mutual fund shares after the widely accepted 4pm trading deadline. For some time, it has been a dirty little secret that brokers routinely receive same-day pricing for trades that occur after 4pm, giving them an unfair advantage over rivals who play by the rules. For jurors in the case, this obviously posed a problem -- was Sihpol actually doing anything wrong if the securities laws at that time did not explicitly establish a 4pm trading deadline? Recognizing that jurors would not be able to render a guilty verdict, Spitzer was forced to give key witnesses in the trial immunity from prosecution -- a step that only served to increase doubts about Spitzer's case.

Spitzer Setback

When somebody finally stood up to NY attorney general Eliot Spitzer, refusing to give into his bullying, and forcing Spitzer to take him to trial, Spitzer lost:

Theodore Sihpol, a former Bank of America Corp. broker, was acquitted on Thursday of 29 of 33 criminal charges that he helped a hedge fund trade mutual funds illegally. The jury said it could not reach a verdict on the remaining four counts against Sihpol, leading Manhattan Supreme Court Justice James Yates to declare a mistrial on those charges. The trial marked the first time that New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer's office has taken a case before a jury in his efforts to reform practices in the $8 trillion U.S. mutual fund industry. (Link)

"This jury of New Yorkers exposes Spitzer as a politician whose ambition has steamrolled too many hardworking men and women of our state," Stephen Minarik, New York State Republican chairman, said in a statement today. "Looks like the so called 'Sheriff of Wall Street' had a gun full of blanks." (Link)

It couldn't happen to a nicer guy. I still think the feds ought to shut Eliot down.

Update Larry Ribstein and Tom Kirkendall both have good posts on this development.

Spitzer. Sigh.

Well, we knew this was coming:

New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer will announce Tuesday he will run for governor of the state in 2006, a spokeswoman said.

"He's announcing that he has decided to run for governor," Cindy Darrison said of the state's top prosecutor who has taken on Wall Street for fraudulent stock research, and mutual funds for overcharging customers.

Darrison said Spitzer, a Democrat long expected to enter the governor's race, would issue a statement on his Web site, www.spitzer2006.com, sometime after 11 a.m. ET but would not hold a news conference. (Source: CNN Money)

Longtime readers know I'm no fan of Eliot Spitzer. I shan't rehash the arguments here, but if you want more check out my TCS columns Spitzer v. Grasso and Spitzer Goes over the Line. If you really want to be inundated with anti-Spitzer editorializing, check out my archive of blog posts on NY's crusading AG.

Tigerhawk Blasts Spitzer

Tigerhawk dug up a letter to the editor that raises some pretty troubling questions about NY AG Eliot Spitzer:

Mr. Spitzer has turned this industry on its head. There have been no court hearings, no testimony in front of appropriate agencies, yet market values of public brokers have plummeted, and thousands will likely lose their jobs. All due to the "appearance of impropriety."

Speaking of "appearances," how about Mr. Spitzer's tennis pal, campaign contributor and former boss securing a 19% sweeter, all-cash deal for his company from Marsh & McLennan Cos. Inc., after Mr. Spitzer hit Marsh with a tsunami of subpoenas. Then, Mr. Spitzer's tennis buddy ends up as CEO after Mr. Spitzer says he "can't deal" with the current Marsh CEO. Later, Mr. Spitzer says it's OK for his tennis pal, now Marsh's CEO, to pay any potential fines from their contingent commissions, which Mr. Spitzer earlier alleged were ill gotten. Isn't this like the DA indicting someone for burglary and saying they can use the proceeds to cover any fines? Yeah, "appearances" do matter, Eliot, and this does not look good. (Link)