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.
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