Tuesday, March 11, 2008

On Eliot Spitzer, Briefly

While much of the U.S. media and various American law bloggers virtually fall over themselves to stretch for creative angles as to the various state and federal offenses New York Governor Elliot Spitzer could be overcharged with, after the explosive revelation of the Governor's liaisons with professional escorts, I have only one question:

Did he use any public money when he dunnit?

If not, this isn't much of a story at all.

It's just another political lynching by the Monica brigade.

....

UPDATE:

Predictably, Mr. Spitzer has now resigned as New York's Governor:

UPDATE - March 14, 2008:

UPDATE - March 15, 2008:

  • "Kristen" lawyers up: "we feel constrained to put the media on notice that as counsel for Ms. Dupré we will take all steps that we deem necessary or appropriate to protect Ms. Dupré from any unwarranted exploitation of her name, picture, voice or likeness for purposes of profit.” - Lawyer for “Kristen” Scolds Media Over Photos - WSJ Law Blog

Update - March 16, 2008

  • Tough questions for the Justice Department from lawyer Scoot Horton at Harper's Magazine: "...there is a second tier of questions that needs to be examined with respect to the Spitzer case. They go to prosecutorial motivation and direction. Note that this prosecution was managed with staffers from the Public Integrity Section at the Department of Justice. This section is now at the center of a major scandal concerning politically directed prosecutions... The Justice Department needs to submit to some questions about how this probe got launched, who launched it, and to what extent political appointees were involved in its direction. This has nothing to do with Spitzer’s guilt or innocence. But it has everything to do with the fading integrity of the Public Integrity Section." See: The Spitzer Sex Sting: A Few More Questions

Update - March 17, 2008

  • Shankar Vedantam of the Washington Post looks at the medial orbitofrontal cortex and the "price-placebo effect" in considering whether Governor Spitzer got his "money's worth." See: Eliot Spitzer and the Price-Placebo Effect

Update - March 19, 2008

- Garry J. Wise, Toronto

Visit our Toronto Law Firm website: www.wiselaw.net

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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Let's see. Here you have a New York governor who crusaded for and signed into law "the toughest and most comprehensive anti-sex-trade law in the nation", which specifically raised the prison terms applicable to the workaday "johns" who patronize prostitutes. And you also have the most celebrated white-collar prosecutor of his era, charged with engaging in violations of the same money-laundering laws that he himself invoked in obtaining convictions. As NYC criminal defense attorney/blogger Scott Greenfield points out, "the government regularly prosecutes 'little people' for money laundering violations. It happens all the time":

http://blog.simplejustice.us/2008/03/13/spitzer-aftermath-what-to-expect.aspx

And the best you can think of is to call the revulsion that drove Spitzer from office a "political lynching by the Monica brigade"? I hope it does not pass for progressive thinking in your country to defend high officials who consider themselves above the laws with which they trample others; if anything such an attitude sounds to me more like the sort of royalist streak that I thought Canada had left behind.