Spitzer scandal: The 'Avenging Angel' and the $5,500 hooker

IN THE END, even "Eliot Ness" wasn't an untouchable.

For nearly a decade, prosecutor and pol Eliot Spitzer has been New York's morally upright avenging angel - punishing Wall Street traders and crooked execs with a brand of rectitude that led the media to dub him "Eliot Ness" while making even some supporters uncomfortable.

Spitzer - New York's governor for the last 14 months - lived by the sword, and it looked last night that he was about to die by it, hanging politically by a thread after he was linked to an upscale Internet prostitution ring.

Speaking briefly and brusquely from his New York office yesterday afternoon - with Silda, his glum wife of 21 years and mother of their three daughters, by his side - Spitzer apologized to his family and the public but didn't resign. Not yet.

"I have acted in a way that violates my obligation to my family and violates my or any sense of right or wrong," said Spitzer, a Democrat who was New York's hard-charging attorney general before he was elected governor in 2006.

But as sordid details dribbled out last night about Spitzer - referred to in a federal affidavit as "Client 9" of the high-end hookers - and his tryst last month with a brunette call girl named "Kristen" in Room 871 of Washington's Mayflower Hotel, pundits doubted that the governor could hang on.

"When you hold yourself out to be a beacon of morality and you do something like this, it just undercuts your credibility - and I don't see how you can recover," said Larry Ceisler, the Philadelphia-based Democratic consultant.

The Greek-style tragedy of the crusading, upwardly mobile 48-year-old pol and the sex scandal reverberated around America, and achieved what seemed nearly impossible: bouncing fellow New Yorker Hillary Clinton and presidential rival Barack Obama off the TV for several hours.

Although other politicians in recent years have survived sex scandals - from Hillary Clinton's husband to Louisiana GOP Sen. David Vitter, also outed as a prostitution client - Spitzer faces several large obstacles to completing his term through 2010.

The biggest is that the New Yorker is reportedly the target of a federal criminal probe related to his conduct, according to several major news outlets, although there were differing accounts as to why Spitzer might face indictment, since prostitution clients are often not charged.

ABC News investigative reporter Brian Ross said last night that prosecutors started looking into suspicious money transfers by Spitzer, thinking they were possible bribes, but instead learned that they were payments to a company linked to the ring, which operated as the Emperors Club VIP.

But the New York Times - which broke the story around 2 p.m. yesterday on its Web site - and other outlets said that prosecutors are looking at a possible violation of the Mann Act, which prohibits transportation of people across state lines with the intent to commit prostitution. Spitzer reportedly paid to bring the call girl by train from New York to D.C.

Last night, some liberal-leaning pundits were openly wondering if federal prosecutors - working at the behest of a GOP-led Justice Department - were overreaching against Spitzer. The Democratic consultant James Carville flatly told CNN's Wolf Blitzer: "I smell a rat."

But commentators across the political map seemed to agree that Spitzer has a second problem, and that was behavior that - regardless of the legality - does not square with his "Mr. Clean" image.

James Tedisco, the Republican minority leader of the New York State Assembly, called upon Spitzer to quit, saying that he "has disgraced his office and the entire state of New York. He should resign his office immediately. Public service is a public trust. Eliot Spitzer violated this trust and has forsaken his oath of office."

One Wall Street trader told a CNBC business reporter, according to the New York Times blog Dealbook, "There is a God."

Spitzer is loathed in New York's financial district. During his tenure as New York's attorney general from 1999 until his election as governor, his office forced 10 top Wall Street firms into a $1.4 billion settlement over practices during the late '90s stock bubble.

But there was little in Spitzer's resumé that prepared even his foes for yesterday's stunning news.

The downfall started with a report late last week that four people had been indicted for running the prostitution ring known as the Emperors Club VIP.

A defendant in the case, Temeka Rachelle Lewis, told a prostitute identified only as "Kristen" that she should take a train from New York to Washington for an encounter with Client 9 on the night of Feb. 13, according to a complaint. The defendant confirmed that the client would be "paying for everything, train tickets, cab fare from the hotel and back, mini bar or room service, travel time, and hotel."

The prostitute met the client in Room 871 at about 10 p.m., according to the complaint. When discussing how the payments would be arranged, Client 9 told Lewis: "Yup, same as in the past, no question about it," suggesting that Client 9 had done this before.

According to court papers, an Emperor's Club agent was told by the prostitute that her evening with Client 9 had gone well. The agent said that she had been told that the client "would ask you to do things that . . . you might not think were safe . . . very basic things," according to the papers, but Kristen responded by saying: "I have a way of dealing with that . . . I'd be, like, 'Listen, dude, you really want the sex?' "

Other news accounts said that Spitzer was "Client 9" and that he had used the name of George Fox - apparently the name of a prominent political supporter - in his illicit endeavors. The Times also reported last night that Spitzer had been captured on a federal wiretap.

If the governor resigned, as many predicted, it would create one more political first in this year chock full of them. New York Lt. Gov. David Patterson - who is legally blind - would become the Empire State's first black governor. *

The Associated Press contributed to this article.