He's got a lot of enemies. I don't quite believe that this is just a randomly revealed scandal. How many politicians are probably meeting with hookers every day? But yes, it is colossally stupid for Spitzer to be involved in something like this.
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Why Spitzer? Busted for high-end escort... (18 posts)
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Posted 16 years ago #
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Of course it's not a randomly revealed scandal. But he knows what he did. Pretty stupid!
Posted 16 years ago # -
http://harpers.org/archive/2008/03/hbc-90002589
Lawyer questions whether Spitzer was set up, noting political prosecutions
"Note that this prosecution was managed with staffers from the Public Integrity Section at the Department of Justice," Horton writes on his blog, "No Comment." "This section is now at the center of a major scandal concerning politically directed prosecutions. During the Bush Administration, his Justice Department has opened 5.6 cases against Democrats for every one involving a Republican."
Posted 16 years ago # -
It was a way of knocking the CentCom Fallon resignation off the front pages. Cheney is apparently traveling to the MidEast to try to bring down the price of oil (general laughter).
It has been openly speculated that Fallon opposed military action against Iran. I could speculate that Cheney is traveling to the MidEast to personally inform our allies that action is at hand.
(this is of course pure unsubstantiated speculation - but - these sex scandals always DO seem to mask undesirable headlines)
Posted 16 years ago # -
In CA, scandals that the Feds dream up turn out to be about installing an R instead of a D into key roles, such as the person who oversees the state voting system. Here, the D who then bumped out the installed R crony, did so specifically on the issue of vote fraud.
Watch for that here. Who will suddenly have to fill the void? NY State is looking at becoming almost completely D controlled . . . so the need for a quick installation gets around that.
Posted 16 years ago # -
Ah, of course . . . just noticed this:
from a Boston Globe story:
"When Spitzer’s aides used State Police to spy on Joseph Bruno, the Republican Senate majority leader, Bruno deftly turned the harassment against the governor. . . . Last month Spitzer put organization and money behind a Democrat running for an upstate Senate seat that had gone Republican for a century. The Democrat won, reducing Bruno’s Senate majority to a single vote. . . David Paterson, the lieutenant governor, is waiting to take over. An affable man and a Democrat, he had previously served 22 years in the state Senate. The acting lieutenant governor would be none other than Joseph Bruno, who would remain in the Senate."
So now a Rethug who Spitzer tried to cut in on the R's control in the Senate, becomes the "acting lieutenant governor" . . .
Posted 16 years ago # -
A couple of interesting article on Admiral William Fallon from Chris Floyd:
Crushing the Ants: The Admiral and the Empire http://www.chris-floyd.com/content/view/1448/135/
The Ant Man Exits: War Crime Accomplice Canned for Insufficient Groveling http://www.chris-floyd.com/content/view/1453/135/
Posted 16 years ago # -
What was he thinking?
The Spitzers have a real estate empire. They are a super-rich family, members of "the top one-percent." It seems incredible that someone with Eliot Spitzer's brains, position and long experience at the power game couldn't use a trusted family confidante -- a bag man, in the vernacular -- to pay for his whores in cash.
According to today's stories, it was "his bank" that called the feds. The Times lead reads: "Last summer, employees at a large New York bank detected something suspicious..." Banks are required to report individual movements of more than $10,000 in cash, but Spitzer's payments were structured to avoid that. A suspicious transaction report was therefore filed with the IRS at the discretion of the unnamed bank's unnamed "employees."
They may have well known what would happen, once the fully partisan Bush Justice Department got word that the cash movements belonged to Spitzer. Of course wiretaps would follow. By the time a second unnamed bank also filed a report -- again, which bank and on whose discretion is still unsaid -- the feds were already listening.
So here's the speculation: Did bank executives gain Spitzer's trust and give him assurances that any business he wanted to do through them would pass as kosher? Did the governor have special relationships with the two banks that went beyond keeping his private accounts with them? Did people at these banks know each other? Perhaps, as a rising member of the power elite, Spitzer believed the banks knew he could do favors for them, and therefore felt secure transacting his hanky panky through them. Perhaps executives of the two banks were among his campaign contributors.
And then they told the feds, perhaps fully aware of where the “suspicious†money was going.
If that's how it happened, he could hardly turn on his now-former chums at the bank and accuse them of a double-cross, could he? All that was left for him was to walk the plank of public contrition, in the hope the feds agree to let him resign without an indictment. (Just the kind of deal he'd work out, if he was still the Attorney General.)
These are weird times for many a "large New York bank." Rumors swirl that Citibank may not have the reserves to handle call-ins on its debts. Spitzer's public blow-up on Monday was sandwiched -- not necessarily as a master plan, but surely in a happy serendipity -- between the weekend predictions of a stock market dive, and the Tuesday morning flood of new liquidity from Bernanke's Federal Reserve.
More water down the bottomless hole.
The myth of Spitzer as the Antichrist of Wall Street has a grain of truth, sort of like the myth that the Clintons are progressives. The point is, everyone on Wall Street [i]believed[/i] Spitzer was their enemy, just like right-wingers think the Clintons are communist agents. And Wall Street is cheering Spitzer's demise, which comes as the euphoric icing on the Fed moves that have once again brought a market surge just when all signs pointed down. Euphoria is an intangible, but markets thrive on it, especially when $200 billion in freebies is flowing down the pike. Someone in a position to guess these two events would kick off this week -- for example, the executives of a "large New York bank" with an inside line to the Federal Reserve -- could have made an enormous killing.
All great fun for the Ponzi scheme that passes for our financial system, but the times remain as weird and as perilous as they have ever been. Let's see what they come up with to avoid next week's crash!
Posted 16 years ago # -
Posted 16 years ago #
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http://www.prorev.com/2008/03/spitzer-saga-contd.h...
timing is everything
Posted 16 years ago # -
Nicholas -
i'm surprised that you left out the fact that the big pimp daddy for the escort service has IRS credentials.
wasn't that convenient?
Posted 16 years ago # -
JohnA:
I wouldn't leave such a thing out, I didn't hear it.
Why don't you put up a link to the details or tell us how you know this, dear?
Posted 16 years ago # -
i know this because theory without action...... nevermind......
From CNN transcripts:
“Mark Brenner … the alleged ringleader of the Emperors Club … Mark Brenner, the ringleader, is an enrolled agent with the IRS …†“DREW GRIFFIN, CNN SPECIAL INVESTIGATIONS UNIT CORRESPONDENT: Wolf, something that is very curious in the least. But certainly interesting at most and may explain why the IRS got on in this in the first place. Mark Brenner, he is the alleged ringleader of the Emperors Club, this prostitution ring that Eliot Spitzer, the governor, has been wrapped up in. We've just confirmed with the IRS that Mark Brenner, the supposed ringleader, was or is an enrolled agent with the IRS. This is somebody who represents taxpayers in front of the IRS. That means he either studied IRS law and took the test or is possibly an ex-IRS agent with the tax company. It certainly adds to the intrigue as to how the IRS actually began this investigation with money transfers and looking at how this money was going and eventually got to the point where they identified client number nine as being the governor of New York.
Posted 16 years ago # -
You wanna make a competition out of this? I don't.
Here's some data dump:
The link for what you quote on Bremer and the IRS is here: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0803/11/sit...
The banks that reported on Spitzer were reportedly North Fork Bank - now known as Capital One Bank, they were bought out apparently, so that makes them very big indeed - and HSBC.
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/03/...
Today's Must Read By Paul Kiel - March 12, 2008, 9:55AM
How exactly did the feds end up snagging Eliot Spitzer? We've been asking the question since the story broke on Monday. Reports from a number of news outlets have been providing more and more details so that now, with the help of the feds' filings, it's possible to piece together a reasonably detailed timeline of how the investigation went down. So, without any more ado, here it is:
7/07: North Fork Bank in New York sends a Suspicious Activity Report to the Treasury Department about transfers in Spitzer's personal accounts. The "bank's report was triggered by Spitzer's attempt to structure a $10,000 cash transaction into three parts." Spitzer also reportedly asked the bank to "take his name off the wires." Treasury Department officials forward the report to federal prosecutors in Manhattan.
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.
(MORE AT LINK...)
Republican lobbyist claims he knew in advance of Spitzer downfall
http://www.newsday.com/news/columnists/ny-nyhen125...
GOP schemer predicts more shakeups ahead Ellis Henican March 12, 2008
(...)
Yesterday was beautiful, bright and crisp in Albany, with just the earliest hint of spring. But before I could even make my way to the Capitol to gather up a new pile of reaction statements, my cell phone was ringing from a place even nicer than this.
The call-back number said 202, for Washington. But the sunny voice on the other end could only be in Miami. Yes, it was Roger Stone. And the exuberance in his voice made high-fiving Albanians sound almost morose. "I didn't make him go to a prostitution ring," said the most famous and ruthless Republican dirty trickster who still walks the earth. "He did that all on his own."
Stone said that even before I asked if his hand was somehow in Spitzer's latest trouble. I figured, somehow or another, it had to be. [b]"No comment on that," Stone said. "I will say I knew it was coming. That's why I wasn't too upset about the results of the special election," where a Democrat grabbed a supposedly safe Republican State Senate seat, leaving Democrats just one vote shy of control.[/b]
Conversations with Stone often go like that. Always cocky. A little cryptic. Leaving you wondering about more. With a guerrilla-politics resume that goes all the way back to Richard Nixon, Stone's fingers have been in some of the most dastardly Republican schemes of the past 40 years, up to and including the Florida 2000 presidential recount. He helped rich guy Tom Golisano make high-priced mischief in the previous governor's race. He returned to Albany last year on the dime of Senate boss Joe Bruno. Desperate to keep his tiny Republican majority in the Senate, Bruno figured Stone could help. And he helped, until he had to quit when a voice that sounded awfully like his turned up making threats on the governor's father's voice mail.
(...)
Even though there's no evidence he sent the governor to a hooker or made the Bush Justice Department follow up on a banking tip, he's been energetically working to undermine the governor.
(...)
"My work isn't done there," he said.
"Just watch."
(...)
Copyright © 2008, Newsday Inc.
Dismiss it as bluster, but Stone's claim would be a confession to illegality on the level of at least, oh, paying for sex. Is Stone supposed to know about ongoing investigations before they are unsealed? Who are his friends at Justice?
Finally:
I don't care about Spitzer. I do care if there was a set up. Spitzer can go to hell.
His year in office was a disaster. His only major accomplishment was a workers' compensation "reform" that screwed workers. That's it. He supports making poor people pay to drive into Manhattan. As AG, he didn't investigate 9/11. He supported the invasion Iraq. Until yesterday he was one of pro-war Clinton's most important backers. He had a hypocritical "law and order" stance, including against prostitution. As governor, he went out of his way to make enemies. He went on a fishing expedition to nail Bruno. And he was a famously arrogant prick.
So, provisionally, I welcome Governor Paterson.
Posted 16 years ago # -
John,
Please include links any time you quote an online news story or article. Its basic forum protocol, and something you fail to do quite often. Don't forget that others are reading this forum and may want to do further reading beyond what you have quoted.
Nick seems to have the right idea.
Thanks.
Posted 16 years ago # -
Nyah nyah.
Found the complaint online - damn, another long one. If you read it first, John, you win!
Posted 16 years ago # -
Nicholas - if i did not know you better i'd say you were baiting me.
you should recognize a compliment when you see one. i was employing sarcasm - as in - wow - a miracle - i actually found something Nicholas - the Hoover vacuum cleaner of research didn't see yet. That only happens on leap years when there is a lunar eclipse in the month of February.
Posted 16 years ago # -
Well, thanks John.
Meanwhile... just in case anyone's seeing the predictable made-up stories about how Spitzer was about to arrest everyone on Wall Street, expose 9/11, shut down the CFR, and withdraw from Vietnam, erm, Iraq ...
RE: And as for Spitzer and September 11th
Attorney General Spitzer filed an amicus brief on behalf of Silverstein's argument in the WTC insurance cases that the September 11th crashes constituted not one but two events under New York State law, and that Silverstein was therefore entitled to double the payout.
Spitzer also mediated to arrange the final settlement on the insurance claims last year. He and his campaign contributer Silverstein appeared to be buddy-buddy.
Spitzer's office acknowledged in October 2004 the receipt of the 2004 "Justice for 9/11" citizens' complaint and petition citing probable cause and calling for a criminal investigation or grand jury to examine unsolved crimes relating to September 11th, including allegations of possible government complicity.
They never responded to this initiative, despite its being presented by September 11 family members and first responders.
When I asked Spitzer about a September 11th investigation at a public meeting as AG (on the day he announced his run for governor!), Spitzer said his office would look carefully at the petition and respond (again, they didn't) but otherwise made it plain where he stood: "I trust the 9/11 Commission." He called it an excellent report.
An important Spitzer staffer, Dietrich Snell, worked for the 9/11 Commission before joining the Attorney General's staff in 2004. Snell appears to have been one of the lead writers of the 9/11 Commission Report. While on the 9/11 Commission staff, he was the one who heard the claims of the Able Danger whistleblowers, five military personnel and contracters who stepped forward to say that their surveillance operation had in 1999 and 2000 located Mohamed Atta and three other alleged ringleader-hijackers of the 9/11 attacks as members of an al-Qaeda "Brooklyn Cell" plotting an attack in the United States. The Able Danger operatives' request to pass this information to the FBI was blocked by their superiors at Socom in Florida, their program was shut down, and the most prominent officer making the claims, Anthony Shaeffer, was suspended from duty due to an internal Pentagon investigation into charges that he had overcharged for phone bills by $67 and stolen pens. Snell was reportedly the 9/11 Commission staffer who rejected an investigation into the matter.
In 2006, when a Congressional subcommittee wanted Snell to testify on the 9/11 Commission's refusal to investigate the Able Danger story, Spitzer stepped in and said he would refuse to allow Snell to testify.
In short, there is no indication that Spitzer was interested in investigating September 11, despite ample occasion and opportunity thanks to his offices to aid the cause of truth, justice and disclosure.
Posted 16 years ago #
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