Why Spitzer Really Resigned
March 30th, 2008 at 07:32am Mark Noonan
I thought it odd that a mere sex scandal would force a Democrat out of office - didn’t do the trick for Bill Clinton, Barney Frank or Gerry Studds, after all. Spitzer could have done the usual - for Democrats - song and dance about how its a private matter between him and his wife, yadda, yadda, yadda and figure that it’d be old news by the time he ran for re-election in 2010 (naturally counting on “how he’s grown since the scandal” stories from the MSM along the way…). But, he’s out - and out rather quickly. In writing Caucus of Corruption, Matt and I discovered that there is only one thing which will convince Democrats to force one of their own out of office - a risk to the power of the Democratic party as a whole. In the Spitzer sex scandal, there was no immediately apparant risk to Democratic power - but, as it turns out, there was something behind the scenes:
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — A prosecutor said Friday that former Gov. Eliot Spitzer may have lied when he told investigators he wasn’t deeply involved in a plot that used a Republican rival’s travel records in an effort to embarrass him. He added that Spitzer could have been indicted had he not resigned in disgrace in a prostitution scandal.
Albany County District Attorney P. David Soares said in a report that Spitzer’s former communications director, Darren Dopp, recounted conversations and e-mails that indicated Spitzer directly ordered him in a profanity-laced exchange to give a reporter records regarding Senate Republican leader Joseph Bruno’s use of state aircraft on days he attended Republican fundraisers.
Dopp was provided immunity for his testimony in Soares’ second investigation of the 2007 scandal. Dopp had faced a possible perjury charge because a statement released by the Spitzer administration about the scandal differed from his own testimony, but Soares found Friday that he did not commit perjury.
“If Dopp’s testimony is credited,” Soares’ report states, “then former Governor Spitzer’s answers were not truthful. Accordingly, we intended to present these conflicting accounts to a grand jury.”
But Spitzer’s resignation this month, after he was implicated in an investigation of a prostitution ring, made it impossible to file a charge against him because it meant he was no longer a public employee, the report said.
Spitzer, like Soares a Democrat, never testified under oath in the travel-records scandal. Instead, he was bound by a statute that required public officials to answer questions truthfully or face a charge of obstructing justice.
As an aside, that is a really rather clever law I’d like to see here in Nevada - essentially make it a felony for a politician to lie.
Sex scandal? Big deal. Potential indictment which might blow the lid off of Democratic corruption in New York State, thus dragging down the whole party in an election year? Well, Spitzer had to go. The really terrible truth about the Democratic Party is that it acts like a Mafia organization - anything goes, as long as you pay homage to the Dons (in the Democrats’ case, this would be the public employee unions, the Culture of Death and the kook left)…with, of course, the proviso that if you become someone likely to harm the “family”, you might have to be pole-axed. Spitzer’s whoring was no problem and, indeed, even his breaking of New York law wasn’t a problem, per se…but risking the power and position of the Democratic party? He might as well have tried to rat out Al Capone as do that…
Entry Filed under: Corruption, Democrats
23 Comments
1. Christian Wright | March 30th, 2008 at 7:54 am
You really don’t know the law, do you.
If he was a public employee at the time of the crime, he can be criminally charged. Resigning does nothing.
They are not charging him because there is no case.
2. ViralNexus | March 30th, 2008 at 9:07 am
Wow Mark, that makes a lot of sense now that you have brought it up. I mean the fact that what Spitzer did is illegal (soliciting a prostitute) and would have definitely meant an indictment if he had stayed can’t be the real reason he resigned. Yes you are correct- some long shot, conspiracy-filled, possible indictment about something they could not have prooved he did even if they wanted to, is a far more plausible reason. Your thought processes and the way you draw inventive conclusions is simply amazing. Though I have far more faith in your intellect and have to believe that you come up with these cockamanie blog posts to get people in an uproar. Thanks for the laugh though- it gets my day off to a humorous start.
3. js | March 30th, 2008 at 9:18 am
I never figured that just because you are no longer governor fixed criminal acts so you cant be prosecuted.
This rabbit hole goes deeper than this. It has to.
4. Pirate’s Cove &hellip | March 30th, 2008 at 9:39 am
[…] Blogs for Victory explains why Spitzer (D-NY) really resigned […]
5. JPL | March 30th, 2008 at 10:29 am
You really don’t know the law, do you.
No, CW, it’s simply you who lacks reading comprehension. The statutory interpretation that you disagree with wasn’t written by, endorsed by, or even commented on by Mark (probably because it’s pretty much irrelevant to the point of his post). All Mark did was quote the AP article. If the AP got the statute wrong, then it’s the AP, not Mark, that “really doesn’t know the law.”
You know, CW, this habit of yours of reflexively attacking every post made here — regardless of its merits — makes it hard to take seriously anything you say.
6. Michael | March 30th, 2008 at 10:37 am
Anthony Scibelli might have something to do with all this.
More…
Wait, Scibelli is just a patron of the arts…
note: Shargel is Scibelli mouthpiece, I mean lawyer.
This is getting better than “The Godfather” movie. Hookers pals with Gambino crime family and servicing the New York governor. I think they made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.
7. FmrMarine | March 30th, 2008 at 11:32 am
Mark;
“The really terrible truth about the Democratic Party is that it acts like a Mafia organization - anything goes, as long as you pay homage to the Dons (in the Democrats’ case, this would be the public employee unions, the Culture of Death and the kook left”
This little paragraph really sums up the moral, bankrupt democRAT party and its minions.
8. SGAH | March 30th, 2008 at 11:59 am
Mark,
The way that you want to play to Democrats are just corrupt card is very funny. Spritzer wasn’t charge with a crime yet, but he should. On the other hand our Congressman in Idaho was and pled guilty…he is still in office!
9. noodle | March 30th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
I have to say I get a kick out of these posts. “Democrats are the devil”. Sigh - wow how stupid.
10. FmrMarine | March 30th, 2008 at 1:16 pm
nd
<<I have to say I get a kick out of these posts. “Democrats are the devil”. Sigh - wow how stupid.<<
NO
they represent the devil.
IE
abortion
adultery
homosexuality
pornography
marxism
to name a few.
11. Diane Tomlinson | March 30th, 2008 at 1:27 pm
abortion= a right to choose to breed that belongs to a woman
adultery= practiced by many Christians with great relish daily
homosexuality= how a person is made by the Divine creator just like the straight
pornography=enjoyment of the human form and fucntion for the pleasure of adults
marxism= and interesting treatise on where capitalism might be going in the next 100 years
Sins, stones, casting back atcha
12. Mark Noonan | March 30th, 2008 at 2:45 pm
FmrMarine,
As Matt and I say, “Caucus” wrote itself…we just had to organize it and provide the narrative…it wasn’t like we had to get un-named sources or dig carefully through the archives to find the dirt on the Dems…its everwhere and all the time. The difference between the GOP and the Dems? The GOP quickly gets rid of its failed members, Democrats re-elect theirs.
13. Mark Noonan | March 30th, 2008 at 2:54 pm
SGAH,
And the State and national GOP has made it clear that Craig should resign - and if he failed to resign and sought re-election, the GOP would find and fund a primary challenger against him. The GOP did this because soliciting anonymous sex in a public place is entirely outside the realm of moral, civilized behaviour and anyone who does such a thing should remove himself from office, or be removed. Now, contrast this to Gerry Studds - who was re-elected 7 times in an overwhelmingly Democratic district AFTER he was censured for having sex with a minor.
And that leads us right back to where we started in the thread - Democrats involved with sex scandals (and even with prostitution scandals - such as Barney Frank and his live-in hooker) don’t normally resign…and even when they are forced out, its usually only after indictment and conviction. Spitzer quit within days of the initial revelation - left with hardly a whimper, with the whole New York Democratic party on his case. Why? Why is Spitzer’s case so different from all of the other Democratic scandals?
Well, given the vast knowledge I have as co-author of the book on Democratic corruption, I surmise - based upon precedent - that there was something else of a far more serious nature than illicit sex…and now its coming out. What this, in turn, should lead you to do - though it won’t, because Democrats are usually deathly afraid of, you know, thinking ‘n stuff - is wonder why you support a party which has so many corrupt members, and refuses to do anything about them unless power is placed at risk?
14. jerry | March 30th, 2008 at 3:36 pm
Vitter?
15. jerry | March 30th, 2008 at 3:37 pm
Reniz?
16. jerry | March 30th, 2008 at 3:37 pm
oops….Renzi?
17. Christian Wright | March 30th, 2008 at 8:51 pm
Mark:
I don’t think Craig should resign.
Craig had an expectation of privacy.
Cops have no business sitting around in a men’s room when there is real crime out on the streets.
If true, that he used gay body language code to make a pass at another man; the proper response is to say, “No, thank you,” or “Get the Hell away from me,” if you are homophobic.
How would you like it if making a pass at a flight attendant at an airport bar was a criminal offense?
18. Almiranta | March 31st, 2008 at 1:03 pm
Oh, Diane, Diane, Diane—–how quickly you revert to the rhetoric of your “tribe”.
Abortion represented as a choice to “breed”? Knowing how contemptible ‘breeders’ are, no wonder you favor anything that impedes this nasty habit.
But in fact women have the choice to not conceive—or, to put it as elegantly as you have—to BREED. They have a range of choices, from CHOOSING not to engage in BREEDING activity (such as some “tribes” do) to CHOOSING which form of contraception to use to avoid the consequences of such BREEDING activity.
Should a woman decide that although she really likes the BREEDING activity but does not want to worry about actual BREEDING she can take a simple step to assure that she can never be BRED.
To those of us who consider all women to be human beings, we don’t use the term BREEDING to describe procreation. It’s a respect thing.
The rest of your polemic is just more irrelevant gibberish.
Love your definition of ‘pornography”. Wonder if this highly sanitized pseudo-definition has anything to do with the many comments that your own web site is pornographic. Yep, ask a pornographer to define porn, that’s the ticket.
As for Craig, this is what happens when a person can be accused of a crime for what he was allegedly thinking.
19. Herman | March 31st, 2008 at 7:46 pm
The Spitzer case is sooooooooo yesterday’s news. The real question for today is why did Bush’s Secretary of Housing and Urban Development resign today?
20. Herman | March 31st, 2008 at 7:51 pm
Dang, isn’t it something that for every one Democrat resigning in disgrace, there are like, what, five Republicans?
21. DM | April 1st, 2008 at 1:54 pm
Gee Herman, do you think that might be because the disgraced Democrats do whatever they can to retain their political position while the Republicans as a rule step down under similar situations? You’re delusional if you think there are 5 times more disgraced Republicans than Democrats.
22. Joe | April 1st, 2008 at 2:00 pm
DM,
“while the Republicans as a rule step down under similar situations”
you did not just claim that, did you?????
Do we need to bring up Vitter? Last I heard he was still serving.
Craig? Pleaded guilty. Still serving.
Renzi? Indicted. Still serving.
Yes… you can bring up Jefferson on the Dem side (who I think should step down), but your point is that Repubs “as a rule step down“. That is not only a blatant lie, but it is laughable.
23. barney song&hellip | April 4th, 2008 at 10:01 pm
[…] on our TV Freak blog Watch videos of our panelhttp://www.contracostatimes.com/ci_8766894?source=rssWhy Spitzer Really ResignedI thought it odd that a mere sex scandal would force a Democrat out of office - didn??t do the trick […]