Login HereNot a big surprise. Here's the bit I hope gets the most traction:
Over the course of my public life, I have insisted, I believe correctly, that people, regardless of their position or power, take responsibility for their conduct. I can and will ask no less of myself. For this reason, I am resigning from the office of governor.
I think it likely we'll find, over time, that those investigating Spitzer felt obliged to pursue what otherwise would not have merited a continued investigation. I suspect we'll learn that public people, like Spitzer, are going to be exposed to a lot more scrutiny--and otherwise unusual investigations--because of these new post-9/11 money laundering laws.
Still. Spitzer was a crusader about law and order. And, according to his own standards, that requires taking responsibility for his conduct. And that, at least, is how he's pitching his resignation.
Update: Via David Kurtz.
In response to press speculation, MICHAEL J. GARCIA, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said: "There is no agreement between this Office and Governor Eliot Spitzer, relating to his resignation or any other matter."
Does it sound to you like they still want to charge him?
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It is a great shame, I was also impressed with the bit you quoted. If only our leaders, particularly in the White House, chose that road - even occasionally.
These articles may be helfpul in detailing how the DOJ and Tresasury Departments allege Spitzer was targeted. I still believe the SWIFT data base is being illegally adopted by the CIA, and illegally used by DOJ, that it is illegal as applied to US citizens operated in Belgium, that there are no safeguards for US citizens now vis a vis SWIFT as Mary pointed out in the thread before this. If SWIFT was used to get the data initially on Spitzer, then it was illegally done. However the hastily contrived cover story for US Attorney Garcia goes along the lines of these links. What they did worked because the airhead media is following Spitzer’s limo to his resignation the way they followed OJ, Martha Stewart, and Britney.
The government would defend any attempt at discovering how they actually got the information in the first place with a State Secrets argument or just plain lie if Spitzer’s attorney Michele Hirsman were to try to find out. She used to be his first Deputy Attorney General in NY and was chief of the Public Corruption Unity in the S.D.N.Y. for eleven years.
This is the way the government will allege they got the information on Spitzer. I believe it is a a front story that is extremely shaky along the lines of a standard IT interception as outlined below if in fact the SWIFT data base from Brussels, Belgium, now deployed by the CIA was the source of the information. DOJ will say they did this with Treasury along the lines of the links below.
Mary did an excellent job of pointing out insights on SWIFT in her analysis Mary’s analysis on SWIFT here.
The government would defend any attempt at discovering how they actually got the information in the first place with a State Secrets argument. They have a front story that is extremely shaky along the lines of a standard IT interception as outlined below:
Eliot Spitzer’s Software Nightmare
How an information system helped nail Eliot Spitzer and a prostitution ring
Financial Crimes Enforcement Network
SAR Activity Review By the Numbers
Spitzer, February 14, 2008:
“Not only did the Bush administration do nothing to protect consumers, it embarked on an aggressive and unprecedented campaign to prevent states from protecting their residents from the very problems to which the federal government was turning a blind eye.
Let me explain: The administration accomplished this feat through an obscure federal agency called the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). The OCC has been in existence since the Civil War. Its mission is to ensure the fiscal soundness of national banks. For 140 years, the OCC examined the books of national banks to make sure they were balanced, an important but uncontroversial function. But a few years ago, for the first time in its history, the OCC was used as a tool against consumers.
In 2003, during the height of the predatory lending crisis, the OCC invoked a clause from the 1863 National Bank Act to issue formal opinions preempting all state predatory lending laws, thereby rendering them inoperative. The OCC also promulgated new rules that prevented states from enforcing any of their own consumer protection laws against national banks. The federal government’s actions were so egregious and so unprecedented that all 50 state attorneys general, and all 50 state banking superintendents, actively fought the new rules.
But the unanimous opposition of the 50 states did not deter, or even slow, the Bush administration in its goal of protecting the banks. In fact, when my office opened an investigation of possible discrimination in mortgage lending by a number of banks, the OCC filed a federal lawsuit to stop the investigation.”
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/031208J.shtml
Nice to see that Ted Wells is keeping busy.
It ain’t over until the Fat Ted cries…..
“…I think it likely we’ll find, over time, that those investigating Spitzer felt obliged to pursue what otherwise would not have merited a continued investigation….”
I suspect that is true - once prosecutors and investigators, especially ones with any integrity, were presented with the evidence of potentially bundled transactions, it would seem that if they did not proceed, they were giving Spitzer a pass because of his political office - of course, the problem is the flip side of such “selective prosecutions” - David Boies on Charlie Rose said last night that this was certainly a “selective prosecution”, but on the grounds that the Governor of New York was involved, and not Joe Blowjob (not his words!) What about selective prosecutions of Democrats who happen to be governors? I suspect “karl’s girls” felt “obliged to pursue what otherwise would not have merited an investigation”, but for totally different reasons. It seems that any kind of public integrity prosecution should now be carried out by quasi-judicial prosecutors, with lifetime tenure, just like federal judges, so as to assure the public that there are no political witchhunts.
That’s the story Michael Garcia will advance. I outlined how DOJ will allege they took Spitzer down in the links here.
I suspect they used SWIFT illegally to get the data originally.
IMO the analogy should be that this new approach to money transfers with public people makes every line AUSA an Independent Prosecutor–at least in the sense that the Prosecutor feels obliged to come up with a crime (which may or may not have been true, but is the slam against them).
Michael J. Garcia is one of Karl’s (now Gillespie’s) girls. There are a lot of Karl’s Girls who are in the ranks of DOJ as USAs, AUSAs, the DAG, and the DAA at DOJ. Mike Mukasey is one of “Karl’s girls” as well who is currently functioning as the Sylvio Dante in the DOJ crime family.
What really killed Spitzer was that unlike Clinton, the party did not stand behind him - he didn’t have the votes, either in the party or support from the public, to fight it out. Other than the Joe Lieberman scolds, Clinton kept the caucus and the public with him, especially the Congressional Black Caucus, and there were never 66 votes in the Senate. If Spitzer could have avoided impeachment, perhaps he could have fought it out on the legal merits, although this path was risky too - he is really rich, but so was Martha Stewart, and she did time. Spitzer faced disbarment too if convicted on indictment.
This is OT but I thought you might want to know about this. It’s a new site launched by NBCU (Universal) and Fox and it promises to have video access of films and sports events free. I imagine like a lot of streaming shows, they are testing the waters for hits to eventually sell media content on the web.
Hulu
Testing Over, Hulu.com to Open Its TV and Film Offerings This Week
I’m not sure that prosecution guidelines by themselves will do any good - for their to be both public confidence and an effective deterrent against fraud by public officials, I believe you need an armslength, separate agency where the prosecutors report to Congress or the Legislature alone, and have 5 year budgets, and monitoring by retired judges.
Bingo. See, thats the problem. It is maybe sometimes a fine line, but it is still a distinct line. Even if it is true that the genesis was a SAR/CTR, once they see that there is no reason to believe the subject is not reputable (and being the independently wealthy governor of NY is not a sign of disrepute), and there is no obvious improper purpose (i.e. the transfers were not to the AQ Martyr’s Charity or something), you should be done. Because going further is investigating a person in search of a crime. That is no good.
Folks
I’ve had my fill of birds chirping and pleasant weather, so I’m going to go catch a plane home. Will probably check in at the airport, but then will see you later in the day. Hope to read some PDFs on the flight.
May not be of importance to most here, but Hulu is not available outside the USA. There may be workarounds, such as Hotspot Shield.
Avoiding the prurience of the material theme of the resignation, and needing to read the extended thread two articles ago especially for the SWIFT wiretapping-auditing aspect, I would proffer that the uninhibited ramparts of the PatriotAct-like laws are the electronic communications era equivalent of machine politics, effectively giving insiders targeting means to preserve the exclusivity of the secondHandSmoke-filled cloakroom. I see, too, a Seligman retributive parallel, as NY governorship has served as a career path to one party or the other’s presidential ticket leading post, as has CA’s governorship, though in the latter respect the Republicans are at a disadvantage, having wished for a script reading figurehead candidacy from a CA ‘favorite son’ but dreading the effectiveness NY’s governor demonstrated as state AG, an inequality obliterated with the current scandal and the resignation. I appreciated, as well, the mention of the comptroller of the currency; there is a tidy margin of profit some banks aggregated under the atmosphere of policies as excrcised by the CotC especially in Bush2’s 1st-term. Another feature of the scandal that peers thru the journalistic prose has been the ‘politically exposed persons’ euphemism as applied to leaders in surveillance societies; unfortunately, UK cannot take a defense of privacy lead on the continent in this regard, as it has progressed farther along the road to surveillance abrogation of traditional privacy than US has yet, but the infrastructure congress and the US executive have emplaced in the past seven years continue to make it evident US is still engaged in the sprint to outpace UK to become most surveilled first.
That’s a big component of his demise, and was one of the themes last night on Charlie Rose. I detest the way this was done, despite the fact that Spitzer was not extremely popular, certainly feared and hated by much of Wall Street. He did impose some much needed change on the financial community, and much needs to be done to regulate and reign in the atrocious perks and exemptions Hedge Fund managers get now compared with a lot of the rest of the financial industry.
This was done to do maximal damage to Spitzer–period.
As Alan Dershowitz said last night, and a thought that struck me early on. Hookers advertise extensively in the pages of New York Magazine in the back and in a lot of New york papers like the Village Voice.
They advertise in a lot of magazines on NY you can buy at your local Borders or Barnes and Noble.
My point being, and Alan Dershowitz’s point was on Charley Rose, that if DOJ wanted to take down high income hooker companies, aka escort services, they have a road map but that isn’t how they usually allocate their resources.
This totally reeks, and it is typical of the systemic, irreversible chronic disease that will plague this DOJ for several generations.
John Stewart’s metaphor with a knife, fork, and a bib with Spitzer’s picture on it was appropriate. There is a pandemic of schadenfreude driven orgasm in the media and Republican party over this. Fortunately for the media, the New York Assembly and Senate, and the US House and Senate, their widespread use of hookers still remains secret.
The fact that this was done via a direct complaint instead of indictment was to use the opportunity to bypass FRCrP Rule 6(e) or Grand Jury Secrecy Rules and showcase this for maximal publicity as Bmaz pointed out here.
i hope they nail the person who revealed Spitzer’s name the press.
That quote was from 2004 but same goes, I’d think.
Yes Spitzer should have obeyed the laws he broke, but due process should also have been followed.
Bingo!
I continue to doubt that there will ever be an indictment here. Any indictment will lead to discovery, and discovery means that we’re going to find out that the “We we’re just following the money” story was all bullshit. That’s not going to happen.
I am sad to see what I felt was a good (on balance) public official end up this way. However, as I always told my employees: “If you don’t want to see it on the front page of the WaPo, don’t do it.” Mr. Spitzer had wealth and power - but he also had the arrogance that often accompanies them.
Well as far as due process, DOJ will say not only was it followed in spades, but every nanomolecule of it was catalogued and archived by the anchors and talking heads on cable networks like MSNBC and the Ho No He Diunnnnt! headlines of the NY Post.
It’s not due process to me that’s at issue here. It’s the way that this information was mined and used.
It would be nice to know more about the woman who was given immunity from prosecution for some crime (what crime??) and then later claimed she had worked for QAT Consulting in 2006.
She reeks of the guy who squealed on Siegelman.
I’m inclined to agree with you. Right now I think Garcia is stringing this out for maximum publicity. He already has what he wants–Spitzer’s not going to be the governor after St. Patrick’s Day.
But if there were an indictment, and Spitzer and his lawyer Michele Hirshman were to try to use discovery to get at what I believe is the real source of this information SWIFT, Garcia would simply allege this was the routine activity of these below and if they had to they’d still claim State Secrets.
I don’t believe the proposed FISA law that many people and ACLU say they can “live with” is worth the paper it’s written on. It has a cascade of loopholes in its sloppy crafting. It does not cover the illegal wiretapping we know took place as early as 2000 from Day One when Bush took office. He didn’t have any experience at all, but he had the drive for power that has decked the Constitution.
How DOJ is alleging this was done:
Eliot Spitzer’s Software Nightmare
How an information system helped nail Eliot Spitzer and a prostitution ring
Financial Crimes Enforcement Network
SAR Activity Review By the Numbers
On behalf of all the birds and the pleasant weather, we Californians bid you a safe trip home and many happy returns to our state.
Yes; nice points along with Mary’s analysis of the evolution of SWIFT here.
There was no need to address any issues prior to 9/11 in the new FISA law. None of the existing suits, almost all consolidated in NDCA, pertain to the time period prior to 9/11 and the statute of limitations has now run; therefore, no need to even mention anything prior to 9/11.
There are almost always flipped snitches that are the bread and butter tools of a DOJ prosecution. I don’t believe for a moment that QAT or Emperor’s escort service was taken down to make a more wholesome New York City or to impact the other cities where they made huge profits.
Again, the current issue of NY Magazine has a couple of hundred escort services in the back, and many of them are as profitable as QAT/Emperor’s.
This was done to take down Spitzer, and to do it in the most publicity driven way possible. That’s why a grand jury was discarded here.
True enough but it doesn’t protect against DOJ using their discretion once again the way I read it, and there are still loopholes for the easy imposition of State Secrets.
It doesn’t do much of anything to stop a vibrant, alive and well TSA per as far as I can tell:
NSA’s Domestic Spying Grows
As Agency Sweeps Up Data
Just a question on local prostitution laws - in Canada, prostitution (ie, paying someone to engage in sexual activity), is legal. Communicating for the purposes, or solicitation, in a public place is not. Living on the avails of prostitution (ie pimping) is illegal. Running a whorehouse is illegal. Is is illegal in New York (or DC) to offer to pay someone for sex, whether in a public place or not?
Not that I am planning a trip to New York or DC in the near future!!!!
source -
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITI.....index.html
“The investigation into the Emperor’s Club, which began in October 2007, included evidence from a confidential source identified in court papers as a prostitute who worked at the club in 2006 and was given immunity.”
PetePierce - what steps were involved in moving the case away from a grand jury?
I am already suspicious of how fast the case proceeded after the Governor was snared after having moved slowly for months, and at how unnecessarily detailed this “Lewis” person was on the phone. Lewis must have flipped before they got Spitzer. If so, did the prostitution ring leader get immunity for giving up a john? If yes, then is that unusual?
Notice how all the questions that lead to the word sex or dollar amounts come from Lewis. The prostitute text messages “package” but “Lewis” asks if he wanted to do something leading to Kristen saying “Dude, do you want the sex.”
http://www.joblo.com/forums/sh.....did=118900
There’s nothing like a good resignation to kill an inane sex scandal. Now let’s talk about the FISA problem.
Yep, that is the crime of solicitation of prostitution, which is a middle of the road state and/or municipal misdemeanor in every jurisdiction I have practiced in. That is the only particularly viable offense i have seen yet for the Spitz I might add.
Ah, you are too modest; enjoy the fine attractions of the Big Apples!
Downthread I noted Adam Davidson on NPR’s “All Things Considered” explanation of the reason that Eliot Spitzer was targeted because he was a “Politically Exposed Person” (PEP). If there is a legal basis for enhanced scrutiny of PEPs, that might have provided the legal cover that Karl Rove and his many minions in the DOJ needed to put Democrats under a microscope, as a form of legalized Opp research. It might also explain why Republican party discipline in Congress persists in the face of a very unpopular administration– because of PEP scrutiny, the WH political apparatus may have the goods on many Republicans as well, and may be using that leverage to keep them in line.
So, what legal basis does PEP scrutiny have?
Bob in HI
wassa matter, can’t handle a little sunshine ???
(wink)
btw, if you’re ever thinking about visiting San Francisco, I’d recommend that you come in September or October. that isn’t related to any political calander or anything. Those are the only two months of the year when the San Francisco weather is survivable
…and in my jurisdiction, both the hooker and the customer can essentially can get a pass for the first time they get caught by going to John School/sex worker support, and doing some community service. You might not even get your name in the paper.
Heh!! Don’t like those apples!!!
Are we really sure there was “spurious activity?”
I know the government is putting that out, but I’d sure like to see that confirmed. Is there “spurious activity” on anyone else’s accounts in the US?” Judging by the time they spent on Spitzer, it doesn’t look like it.
I like all the SWIFT speculation, but I wanna offer another possibility, Ken Langone.
A blacklist burning for Bush” “The more you look the more disbarred and ‘disappeared’ Gore voters you find. You’d almost think it was deliberate”
Langhone is on Choicepoint’s board. Choicepoint sells Equifax’s data. Langone is tight with Dick Grasso and hates Spitzer’s guts. Langone could have persuaded someone at Equifax to give him Spitzer’s banking records. That enormous FCRA (Fair Credit Reporting Act) violation would have led them to the cash withdrawals/wire transfers. That could have been what put them on to the hookers.
When a flight instructor notified the FBI about a foreigner wanting to fly but not land jets, the FBI shoved the report up their collective asses, but now we are to believe that this same FBI noticed a connection between a QAT prostitute in some previous case and Spitzer’s bank’s SAR.
No way. There is a dot missing: SWIFT and PEP profiling.
13 …going further is investigating a person in search of a crime
I also can’t help but think of pdaly’s question about the content of the intercepts from the hooker on the Feb surveillance effort that was successful (yes, I thought it sounded almost scripted) and some early report I thought I saw, but can’t find now, about one of the prostitutes deciding to work with the FBI and the lengthy failed Jan surveillance, lapsed wiretap orders, etc. after that debacle, then the miraculous resurrection all right in time for the successful surveillance. [I also got a little weirded out over the fact that Spitzer’s security detail never figured out either the vehicle surveillance or even the “peaking out from the room across the hall” surveillance.
Still, Spitzer was a moron. However, on the bright side, shouldn’t there be a big and LOUD renewal of calls for Vitter and Craig to resign? Time to wake the sleeping dogs.
More on the background for PEP profiling–
From p. 23 of Appendix A of the 2007 National Money Laundering Strategy:
ICE = Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Spitzer allegedly adapted this system to his own needs when he was New York’s AG (sorry, no references), and hence the NPR report essentially claims that Spitzer is hoist on his own petard.
Nevertheless, the PEP scrutiny looks made to order for Rove.
Bob in HI
Sorry I meant a reference to TIA the Total Information Awareness program, later renamed Terrorism Information Awareness program. The TSA is another abusive program where you might be stopped from flying with no warning–that has a list that has swelled well above a million people now, and a murky redress process after your trip/plans/business meeting have been totally fucked by DOJ.
Great clarity…
Wake those sleeping dogs…
Spitzer admitted wrongdoing and hypocrisy and stepped down. A courage in defeat unknown to the Bush administration and the New York Times, which shamelessly threw stones at Spitzer while giving the Bush administration a free pass, even labeling Bush’s most recent advocacy of torture as “fighting for a strong presidency”. (Had they said, “strong man presidency”, they would have been accurate.)
Spitzer’s self-inflicted fall from grace is a sad event for progressives; but one man is not a movement. Progressives should be more alarmed at the process that exposed Spitzer’s wrongs. It has the earmarks of the Siegelman strategy: staking out a target until he does something stupid, or just inventing it, then prosecuting him for it. (Note, that the Spitzer events all took place in the marketplace, without an indictment.) Were that practiced on the White House and top administrators in federal agencies and Congress, resignations would be an hourly event.
The Rovemeister cynically knows that Democrats aren’t ruthless or lawless enough - or as tolerant of hypocrisy - as his followers. So from Rove’s perspective, corrupting the federal prosecutorial system is a win-win strategy.
What are Dems to do? Legitimately investigate the lawlessness, graft and corruption that defines the Bush presidency. Prosecute and punish convicted wrongdoers. Clean house among the staff and regulations Bush will leave in his wake. And pay for Bush’s debts.
Politically, that’s dynamite, but not nearly as sexy as high-end prostitutes or war, war, war. So they’ll need to poach a few writers from the Daily Show and make clear to Joe and Jill America why doing that is important. To them, their jobs, their healthcare and their children’s educations. The PR battles will make or break the next Democratic administration and, quite possibly, democracy in America. Another legacy of Bush’s Amerika.
Hey, Ishmael, look! From Bob’s post:
Notice one missing country? At least one prominent citizen of which has wandered about NYC with lots of money acquired at a meeting in a hotel room? (Was the money stowed in brown paper bags? I forget.)
Only, of course, if the Dems have an optimistic, inclusive, public-spirited, and reality-based, program to sell.
Large envelopes, $1000 bills, which Mulroney claims he then put in a NYC safe deposit box. BTW, did you notice that McCain has his own Airbus problems?
Speaking of the un-neutered, apparently Vitter isn’t as sleepy as I had hoped.
He is busily working hard to reinsert abstinence only provisions in the African Aids aid package.
Isn’t it time for him to do the right thing and resign? Then whip off the diaper and go have unprotected sex with some drugged up prostitutes.
My point is this: the PEP scrutiny may have begun “innocently” enough as a program to identify drug lords– but sometime ca. 2003 someone brought it to Rove’s/Cheney’s attention and said, “Lookee here! Looks like a great oppo research tool! Might work to keep wayward Republicans in line, too!”
Cynical alternative: PEP scrutiny was a design feature from the start, with the war on drugs as a mere cover story to hide the true purposes of the tool.
Bob in HI
Maybe this was it from the NY Post
5G/HR. HOOKERS
EMPEROR GALS GOT A KING’S RANSOM FOR SEX: FEDS
TPMMuckraker has a timeline but it does not include how busy February 11 was - wiretap renewed and “too much information” text message sent.
Fall, 2007: Another bank (possibly HSBC) sends Suspicious Activity Reports to the Treasury Department. “They showed that Mr. Spitzer and others, including people overseas, collectively deposited hundreds of thousands of dollars into an account of a company called QAT International Inc., whose business involved foreign accounts and shell companies and appeared to be vaguely related to pornography Web sites.”
10/07: The FBI and the IRS-Criminal Investigative Division launch an investigation “focusing on an organization suspected of conducting prostitution and money-laundering crimes in the United States and Europe” — i.e. the Emperor’s Club VIP.
1/8/08: Investigators begin wiretaps of Emperor’s Club managers.
1/26/08: The FBI stakes out the Mayflower hotel in Washington, D.C. “after concluding from a wiretapped conversation that Spitzer might try to meet with a prostitute when he traveled to Washington to attend a black-tie dinner.”
2/7/08: Authorization for wiretaps expire.
2/11/08: Investigators renew wiretaps of Emperor’s Club phones. On this same day, Lewis texts “”pls let me know if (Client-9’s) ‘package’ arrives 2mrw. Appt wd be on Wed.”
2/12/08: Wiretaps pick up Spitzer (reportedly “Client 9″) discussing payments with Emperor’s Club managers and setting up a rendezvous for D.C. the next evening.
2/13/08: Spitzer has his rendezvous with “Kristen.”
3/5/08: Prosecutors arrest four managers of the prostitution ring. Investigator filings in support of the arrests detail the activities of “Client 9.”
The TPM timeline also does not mention the first hooker (or “confidential source”) who worked with the FBI:
“The investigation into the Emperor’s Club, which began in October 2007, included evidence from a confidential source identified in court papers as a prostitute who worked at the club in 2006 and was given immunity.”
Thanks very much Mary02.
So, the SAR’s came from the Emperor’s Club, not from Spitzer.
Yes to all Ishmael. But how these laws are usually enforced is a much differrent question.
Yes, it’s illegal to offer to pay someone for sex or more realistically to be caught and prosecuted moves it into a criminal arena. In the US paying a prostitute is illegal. Pimping is illegal and when it involves many under aged girls, or girls forced into a type of slavery or transported and treated cruelly, it’s a major initiative of DOJ with the help of local law enforcement to prosecute, and should be Turning a trick for money is illegal. That this may happen in social situations or marriages depending on the people involved is a whole other discussion.
You also would probably enjoy reading Glenn Greenwald’s articles (frequently linked here and at FDL)who is a former federal prosecutor, that touch on this if you do not read him regularly over at Salon’s site. Glenn’s two recent articles are here:
Misadventures in logical reasoning — and lessons learned from the Spitzer scandal
Who cares if Eliot Spitzer hires prostitutes?
Escort services thrive in the United States on thousands of web sites, and are advertised in many local newspapers that are the community recreation type. One of my favorite magazines, is New York Magazine partly because I love NY.
New York Mag advertises hundreds of Escort services similar to the one where Eliot Spitzer found his $4300 for a couple hours Kristen.
The prices at most of these services are not as high as they seemed to be at QAT/Emperor’s. Spitzer got a lot of his money from his dad who is a multimillionaire, and it became a campaign issue of sorts.
I don’t know detail of NYC and DC local laws, state or city in the case of NY, but I do know that law enforcement on the federal level or state level, or municiple level is not very consistent. In all big cities in this country, there are busts to be sure–cops with nothing better to do go onto the thousands of boards where escorts advertise and exchange comments much in the way as is done here, and sometimes will bust someone or some people. That is if the cops aren’t on the websites to get their own hookers.
They almost never go after the johns from what I’ve read about. In big cities where I’ve lived if the working girls are on the street and nearby neighbors complain about the nuisance, or allege concommitant drug use, etc. then you’ll have a vice setup sometimes where cops will decoy as the girls “workin’ hard for the money” as the Donna Summer song goes.
This prosecution was unusual because it was staged for maximum publicity to take down a governor and there was not an indictment–there was a direct complaint and BMaz made an awfully important point when he said here that this was an investigation of a person in search of a crime. I don’t believe that it followed SAR/CTR and I have to be clear and say I have no evidence whatsoever that it didn’t and I don’t know how I would get it. That’s the awful platform that now may be operative that John Lopresti alludes to. and EW made well when she said
The feds don’t usually deploy resources to go after escort services involving women of legal age who operate in hotels, motels, or their own or other residences. I’d like to ask Michael Garcia, the US Attorney for the S.D.N.Y. if he has a reading diability when he opens NY Magazine, or the Village Voice.
get any decent Mexican food?
Ishmael @ 49:
I hadn’t, but I’m reading about it now. What a lively corporation.
Bob @ 41:
Sometimes I think that your legislators and investigators have ended up confusing themselves about what they’re doing. Was the idea of PEP scrutiny ever run past anyone who’s thought seriously about the constitution and civil liberties? And the funny laws about money transfers — I am a person of very modest means, but that a rich guy should be moving around $40,000 of his own money — that should attract the attention of the FBI? Surely anyone who was going to try to bribe or blackmail a public official would be after more than that.
I’m sure there’s room for some cynicism, but I also think that a lot of well-intentioned people have to be told to get a grip and restore some sense of proportion.
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.c.....ultpage=5&
FBI Special Agent Kenneth Hosey affidavit, bottom of page 4 and top of page 5 for discussion of the Confidential Source:
9. “I have spoken with another law enforcement officer who has been involved in the investigation of a number of prostitution businesses in the New York City area. The law enforcement officer informed me that in the end of 2006 he spoke with a confidential source (the “CS”) who had worked as a prostitute in New York City. The CS was immunized from prosecution as a result of her cooperation with law enforcement. In addition, the law enforcement officer with whom I spoke confirmed that the CS had provided information that was reliable and corroborated by independent evidence. The CS told the law enforcement officer that during 2006 she worked for the Emporers Club as a prostitute.
10. In an effort to further corroborate the information provided by the CS, I have reviewed bank records for a [redacted] bank account in the name of QAT Consulting Group, Inc. (the First QAT Account). According to the bank records, in 2006, the CS in fact received a check for more than $1,000 from the First QAT Account. …”
52 - that’s the one.
UK Telegraph saying Client #6 is Duke of Westminster…good friend of Prince Charles.
http://www.nydailynews.com/new.....ar_of.html
OT- Garth Porter said in an audio conversation that he thinks this article by Philip Zelikow, “For the Long Haul”, is a revealing statement of bush’s current plan for the permanent occupation of Iraq. Seems Zelikow has written a lot of plans implemented by the bush administration over these nearly eight long years.
http://www.the-american-intere.....038;MId=18
Maryo2 sorry. I had to leave and just saw your question. If bmaz or someone else hasn’t answered, my interpretation of why this happened is this.
Your question as to steps involved in moving the case away from a grand jury is an easy one.
Remember, there was an indictment in fact, Mary. The indictment was of the individuals who ran the service, QAT/Emperor’s Club.
They could have an indictment of Spitzer under seal, but I doubt it. I think they’re quite content to demolish Spitzer via the media. As John Stewart said, the media has a knife and fork out and a bib with his name/picture on it.
The media doesn’t understand much about the law, but they do understand sex. Garcia understands enough about sex to know that the media who likes sex, and knows its ratings value is going to keep this wall to wall for a few days.
The primary purpose of this indictment of the escort service was to destroy Spitzer as governor. That’s why there was so much detail in the affidavit, and some people here have noticed that the obsessive, repetitive detail in the phone calls that were recorded and transcribed.
People like Heidi Fleiss are happy because they feel there has been a double standard in that the johns are usually not prosecuted or held up to shame.
Governor Spitzer hasn’t been indicted, and I don’t think he will be.
Spitzer was mentioned in the Indictment and the Affidavit as Client #9. So what Michael Garcia and hs superiors at DOJ have been doing(I like to think of them all fondly as Karl’s Girls because there is a pandemic now at DOJ where a number of USAs and AUSAs are being morphed into Karl’s Girls or clones of the insipid Leura Canary and Alice Martin who whored themselves out for the Siegelman prosecution. I call that Lerua and Alice’s Emperor’s Club @ Casa DOJ.
There was no grand jury convened for Governor Spitzer. The reasons are obvious. This chronically sick DOJ often prefers to character assasinate Democratic office holders or candidates by prosecuting them via news leak.
If they convene a grand jury (which is in essence a chickenshit operation on the part of an Assistant US Attorney because the defense is not present neither the target nor his or her attorney–and a board certified moron can indict a ham sandwhich) they purportedly have to conform to Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure (FRCrP) Rule 6(e). This mandates grand jury secrecy. Nowadays, however since the Grand Jury is controlled by a corrupt DOJ, there are frequently leaks from the grand jury. Michael Garcia and DOJ didn’t want to be bound by presumed Grand Jury secrecy in the situation with Spitzer so they did not convene a Grand Jury that we know about. They could have done so, and secured an indictment and it could be under seal right now.
I know they are currently hauling the women who were alledgedly working as prostitutes in this business in via subpoena and getting affidavits from them. As far as I know they aren’t ignoring the subpoenas the way Hillary Clinton ignored hers for 18 months.
I do remember something about Governor Spitzer that stuck in my memory. It has to do with the Larry Thompson memo at DOJ and the MO of the US Attorney rebuked by several federal judges to force companies not to pay for their employees legal fees. Spitzer was one of the few state Attorney Generals I can remember who tried to stop companies from paying legal fees for their employees when criminally charged:
New York AG Presses Companies to Stop Paying Indicted Employees’ Legal Bills
Why did the investigation of QAT not begun in “the end of 2006″ when a prostitute told law enforcement that she worked as a prostitute for QAT and provided evidence that she was paid by them? Why did theinvestigation not begin until October 2007 (at least 11 months after QAT was recognized to be a prostitution ring)?
Also, will this unidentified law enforcement official testify at Spitzer’s trial? What happens if this official turns out to be related in any shape form or fashion to Bernie Kerik?
The “investigation” did begin back then; the Feds just don’t admit it. US Attorney’s Offices, and their various law enforcement agents, have this annoying habit of doing a whole lot of investigation before they “formally open” an investigation. This meme is BS. Frankly, I don’t think there will be a Spitzer trial, nor maybe even charges filed. I initially thought they already had a charging document filed and under seal against Spitzer, and that may still be the case, but I am beginning to think not. Even if there are charges, no the “unidentified law enforcement official” you refer to would not likely testify at any trial; he might, however, very well be called to a pre-trial evidentiary hearing assuming the defense filed a motion challenging the Constitutionality and legality of the search/arrest warrants, which any attorney worth his salt would do immediately. Lastly, Pete is fairly spot on with what he related to you, but I would make one technical correction. There were indeed charges filed against the four Emperor’s Club people; however, that was by a charging document known as a “direct complaint” rather than an “indictment”. An indictment is a charging document that is handed up by a grand jury. There may well have been a grand jury involved for investigative purposes in this case but, to date, there have been no charges out of any grand jury. To be honest, I tend to think they did not use a grand jury at all here because they did not want to be constrained by the secrecy requirements, or have the knowledge that they were after Spitzer out there in the hands of that many people.
Mary02–
It’s hard to know exactly when and how this investigation began and investigations take time. In this situation, a lot of the time was spent figuring out how to take Spitzer down, and showcase affidavits that would hurt him the most. Maybe the indictment of the escort service was held for a while so they could take him down via publicity as a sitting governor. He has only been governor for a brief time.
I don’t think there will be any trial of Spitzer Mary nor an indictment of him by Garcia or a criminal complaint by anyone else. This was carefully choreographed to crush Spitzer via publicity.
I don’t think at this point that Garcia, unless he’s really dumb and the rest of DOJ see any point at spending the time and efforts necessary to prosecute him except proscution via media. If they did indict him, there wouldn’t be a trial in all probability. They have him on audio and video tape but there aren’t a lot of things they can charge him with IMO. 95-96% of federal indictments don’t go to trial anyway. The FRE (Federal Rules of Evidence) and the FRCrP Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure are heavily stacked against defendants. DOJ has your money (unlimited resources) to piss away as they want. The vast majority of the federal judiciary were federal prosecutors, some were state prosecutors, and many of the rest never litigated a second in a federal court room including a surprising number of federal appellate judges. I know of several judges in several appellate circuits in that particular category, and they aren’t happy when someone calls attention to their lack of experience.
I know federal appellate judges who never litigated a case in state or federal court. It’s hard to believe, but true. I do not know many people who want to be treated by a physician who has had next to know experience diagnosing and treating patients however, and there the professions are different. Monica Goodling who never litigated anywhere and went to a 19th tier rated law school actually hired Immigration Judges for the DOJ–several of them. They’re on the bench and they don’t know what they’re doing.
Now who claiming to have experience she does not have, does that make me think of hmmmmmmm? Someone whos press secretary couldn’t answer the question about where she got her experience I do believe.
BTW, I hadn’t heard of Gerry Ferrarro in years. I’m glad she’s apparently alive and well. even if she’s saying stupid things and damaging her candidate. I hope she continues to be on camera with mouth open.
Bernie Kerik–he slept with the right wing book publisher in an apartment overlooking the WTC site didn’t he?
Lots of politicians in New York get laid by people other than their wives don’t they?
Jimmy Walker, Nelson Rockerfeller, Rudy 911?
Spitzer Scandal: A New York Story
“Kristen” unmasked and interviewed by reporters for the NYT!! Age 22, the Spitz likes em young.
Oh, and by the way, Kristen/Ashley’s attorney confirms there was indeed a grand jury involved in the investigation.
Thanks for correcting me. Sorry if I used the concept of an indictment twice reflexly without remembering. You made the point a few threads back and I forgot the direct complaint, and reflexly called it an indictment. Obviously they didn’t want Grand Jury 6(e) contstraints although it seems now a days there is a lot of stretching as to what is really federal grand jury secrecy by the gov.
I think you made the major point in this whole situation along with EW, that this was an investigation of a person in search of a crime.
Yes– I have heard that the mean age at these services is in the low 20’s.
I haven’t read that many stories today but I understand one of the clients is “the richest guy” in the UK or something similar.
Thank s to whoever invented the mute button. I just can’t take Susan Molinari yapping away about ectopic fucking when Republicans invented it.
I love NY Magazine–mainly because it has so many stories about places in NY and I love to explore NY. I guess they have cover stories for issues to come.
I think it important that we now know there was indeed a grand jury, because that adds significant depth to the shocking volume of “law enforcement source” leaks that have been littering the airwaves and print media on this. I wasn’t kidding when I intimated that these guys are making Nifong look like a piker.
Very odd thing. The Telegraph have taken their report down (it was there, is still on the Google list for Duke of Westminster). You can’t find it with a site search. You can find a story about the duke’s adventures on the Daily Mail site, but it doesn’t make an explicit connection to the Emperor’s Club investigation.
That man inherited large tracts of central London, Belgravia and Mayfair, and owns much else besides. I see that some of his tenants in Paris are revolting. Heh.
Thanks for updating us on the grand jury. I’m way behind in even reading papers or the web today. No, you sure as hell were not kidding–this out Nifongs Nifong by many a mile. I wonder how much we will ever learn about the real genisis of the information–how it was initially picked up, whether something like SWIFT was actually involved, and how DOJ pin ball machined this around like an off-Broadway play that tours the other states and then finally makes it back to Broadway.
Here’s an excellent takedown of the Neocons arguments for Immunity…
http://www.juliansanchez.com/2.....bstandard/
Mary,
Do you have alink about the lapsed warrant? I remeber reading that, mentioned it to jane and then could not remeber where I had read it.
The link is kinda important to a theory I’m processing.
He Bob, Guess what USA SDNY did right before he became USA?
Yep, head of ICE.
NYT, aka Judy’s writing club, formerly a respected US newspaper, held onto the McCain flying around with a lobbyist story for 3 months. But they printed the story on the QAT indictment on March 7 and then published a story about Spitzer on March 10 saying that “The person briefed on the case and the law enforcement official identified Mr. Spitzer as Client 9.”
Is it legal for law enforcement officers to identify a person who has not had an indictment filed against them? And, what is a “person briefed on the case”? Who gets briefed but is not required to keep information confidential?
I think I had that in my first post somewhere monday, I’ll see if I can find it. Short story though is this: Warrant from Jan. 8 to Feb.7 when it expired. Then renewed on either Feb. 11 or 12 just in time to roll up Spitzer on the 13th. So you can use that for your equation while I look for a cite.
Remember when Fitzgerald explained why he and his entire office could not leak details of the Plame investigation to the press or anyone else? He said they could go to jail if they did. So why does everyone look the other way when all these law enforcement officers and other people “in the know” leak till the cows come home?
Wasn’t Michael Garcia the same guy PJF lent $20 to way back when they were AUSAs in a bar and Garcia needed to buy his lady friend a drink, or get her a cab or something?
Hey hey Mary02. Judy Miller and other problems aside, NYT will always be my favorite American newspaper far and away. If you took their articles on music, art, cooking alone. I collect books on NY and The Times.
Besides, it’s a New York paper.
And as to Na