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Eliot Spitzer Scandal: Prostitution and more

By admin | March 10, 2008

Gov. Eliot Spitzer is widely expected to quit the post he has held for just over a year after being identified as a client of a prostitution ring.

Spitzer made a brief statement this afternoon in which he apologized in a general way to his family and to New Yorkers for violating their trust. Spitzer did not specifically discuss reports that he had used the services of a prostitution ring and declined to answer questions. If he were to resign, he would be succeeded by Lt. Gov. David A. Paterson.

Spitzer spoke at his Midtown Manhattan office to more than 100 reporters and about 30 television cameras, with his wife at his side.

But you better read this article from Newsweek:

Spitzer Gets Spitzered

How Spitzer was brought down by the kind of investigation he pioneered.

The stock market may be battered, the dollar may be plunging, and the economy may be tanking, but there’s a bull market in schadenfreude on Wall Street this afternoon. Even as the Dow was on its way to notching another triple-digit loss, whoops of joy erupted from the dispirited trading floors today on news of New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s disgrace. Spitzer, who rose to prominence as a scourge of Wall Street, uprooting corrupt practices, coming down hard on bad actors and establishing a new moral order, was laid low by reports that he had been involved in a prostitution ring.

Details are still emerging, and it’s unclear how this will all shake out, but one thing is immediately clear: Spitzer has been hoisted on his own petard, brought down by the same kind of investigation he pioneered as a prosecutor. The analogies between Wall Street and prostitution aren’t perfect. (On Wall Street, for example, the transactions involving favors for money are generally conducted when both parties are fully clothed.) But he may have fallen prey to the same types of circumstances and dynamics that led to his astonishing rise.

The unnecessary digital trail.

Among Spitzer’s biggest triumphs as New York attorney general was the investment banking research cases, in which he bludgeoned Wall Street’s biggest banks into an expensive settlement of charges that they pimped out research recommendations in exchange for banking fees. The smoking gun: incriminating e-mails from analysts. Of all people, Spitzer should know that whether you’re prostituting out investment analysis for the sake of banking fees or you’re a governor using the services of expensive prostitutes, discretion is a paramount value. The first and last rule is not to create a paper trail—or, in this age, a digital trail—that can come back to haunt you. But he was reportedly caught on wiretaps discussing bringing a prostitute to Washington to meet him at a hotel.