Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Law Students Blogs -> Harrell Blog

Law Students

: Harrell Blog

The Spitzer Mess--It was a sting of Spitzer

By pharrell

Now I don't want to defend what Spitzer did, which was illegal, hypocritical, and wrong. There is, however, an interesting investigatory angle to the story: According to this New York Times story, the feds didn't just happen to snare Spitzer during a routine investigation into a prostitution ring. Instead, the investigation into the ring flowed from an investigation of the governor himself.

Some months ago bank records revealed suspicious financial transactions involving the governor, prompting a full-on investigation. At first investigators thought the transactions might be evidence of political corruption or campaign finance violations, but the feds soon discovered something much more mundane--the tawdry sex scandal that broke yesterday. Instead of dropping the matter, or putting it on the back-burner that usually warms-over low priority criminal investigations like prostitution, the I.R.S., the F.B.I., and federal prosecutors mounted an all-out sting, taping the ring's execs until they'd caught the governor red-handed. Only after they had him on tape did they indict its leaders and leak Spitzer's name to the New York Times. While I have no sympathy for Spitzer, who, like so many politicians before him, has destroyed himself in this matter, am I crazy for having just the slightest concern about the way the Feds seem to have so eagerly taken down a politician who, among Republican circles, is deeply reviled--while Mark Foley, the Republican congressman who had sex with teenage House pages, has, as far as I can discern, avoided any federal criminal sanction?

Full post as published by Harrell Blog on March 10, 2008 (boomark / email).