Andrew Zajac
Is it just me or does the complaint implicating New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer in a frolic with a call girl read like it was written by people with a very large axe to grind with the now former rising star of the Democratic Party?
Charging documents like this one typically contain the absolute minimum necessary to sustain the accusations.
Prosecutors act as though they’d rather be waterboarded than give up anything beyond what they like to call “the four corners of the complaint.”
Not to worry. There was journalistic catnip larded throughout the complaint, enough to stoke the media frenzy for days. Of particular note is the heavy involvement of “Kristen”, Spitzer’ Valentine eve tryst partner. (Helpfully described as “American, petite, very pretty brunette, 5
feet 5 inches, and 105 pounds.)
Client 9, as Spitzer is known has a lengthy star turn in mid-document, 57 mentions in four and half pages — far longer than nine other clients. Keep in mind that the point of this part of the complaint is to establish that there had been interstate transport in the furtherance of prostitution. So the complaint documents phone calls from Kristen’s handlers to Kristen in New York, mentions her schlep on the train to Washington and lays out a series of phone calls from Spitzer about payment arrangement and hotel logistics.
So where does this existential, post-coital riff by Kristen, speaking to indictee Tameka Rachelle Lewis, in paragraph 85 fit in?
“Kristen” said that she liked him, and
that she did not think he was difficult. “Kristen” stated: ‘I
don’t think he’s difficult. I mean it’s just kind of like . . .
whatever. . . I’m here for a purpose. I know what my purpose is.
I am not a . . . moron, you know what I mean. So maybe that’s
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why girls maybe think they’re difficult . . . . ” “Kristen”
continued: “That’s what it is, because you’re here for a
[purpose]. Let’s not get it twisted – I know what I do, youknow.” LEWIS responded: “You look at it very uniquely, because .
. . no one .ever says it that way.” LEWIS continued that from
what she had been told “he” (believed to be a reference to
Client-9) “would ask you to do things that, like, you might not
think were safe – you know – I mean that . . . very basic things.
. . . “Kristen” responded: “I have a way of dealing with that .
. . I’d be like listen dude, you really want the sex? . . . You
know what I mean.”
Yeah, conceivably there’s some value in broadly hinting at kinky predilections in case Spitzer wants to claim that the financial transactions were unconnected to sex. Maybe it’s a warning to him that if he struggles too much, the contents of the sock drawer where the sex toys are stored will be strewn on the carpet.
But it also has the feel of a pile-on — some payback, a come-uppance for a guy who made a lot of enemies in prosecutions of Wall Street crooks and was seen by some to overplay his hand, to needlessly embarrass his quarry.
Another indicator of an “I’ll fix your wagon” flavor to L’Affaire Spitzer is the speed at which the whole thing has unfolded.
The charging affidavit which, remember, doesn’t refer to Spitzer by time or other even vague identifier like ‘prominent government official’, was unsealed last Thursday and by 2 p.m. or so on Monday, when the New York Times posted its first story on the scandal and the governor effectively was toast.
The Times is one of the few news organizations that could keep up with the torrent of news cascading out of the bust, including the entire back story of how the investigation began as an examination of suspicious financial transactions, courtesy of unnamed government sources.
Today’s Times main story lists contributions by 26 reporters. That’s more bodies than the entire newsroom of a small newspaper.