The day after The Wire signed off on HBO, Eliot Spitzer—the governor of New York, the sheriff of Wall Street, the man who brought down so many in his years as a prosecutor and attorney general—had his career ended by the sort of basic mistakes that even the teenage drug dealers of David Simon’s imagination knew how to avoid.
He made massive withdrawals from his bank.
He ordered his hooker across state lines.
He made his payments directly in cash.
He talked about what he was up to on the phone, for anyone with a wiretap to hear.
In short, he was stupid. And now he could face five years in jail for a crime he did not have to be caught committing.
Thanks to the affidavit filed in federal court, the world now knows that Client 9 of the Emperors Club VIP—who Spitzer all but announced was him in his brief statement to the press on the afternoon of March 10—has a taste for sexual activities that an Emperors Club employee referred to as “things that like, you might not think were safe.”
Whether she meant an interest in asphyxiation or some other violent activity, or whether simply that he preferred to take his prostitutes without a condom, is something the world may never know, especially if Spitzer manages to keep himself out of court by having his lawyers use his very public humiliation and resignation chits in a plea bargain.
What the world does know is that Spitzer was not just a happenstance catch, a john that federal agents were surprised to hear themselves listening to over their headphones in the back of their proverbial white van. On the contrary, Spitzer seems to have been the key that opened the floodgates: massive withdrawals of cash from his personal bank account got people interested in what the governor might be putting $4,300 toward at a time on close to 10 encounters over the past few years. Not bribery and blackmail, they discovered. Just whores.
But the striking thing about the wiretap that ensnared Spitzer and seems poised to be the nail in the coffin of his once-ascendant political career is that the evidence against him might not have been obtained if he had simply paid his bills promptly and accepted the terms laid down by the prostitution ring. Client 9 apparently has only himself and the slow pace of the United States Postal Service to blame.
According to the conversations captured on the wiretap and filed in the affidavit, Client 9 had problems getting his payment in on time. The Emperors Club apparently required payment in advance and preferred payments be delivered by wire transfer. Expenses were rung up to companies named with variations of QAT, so that they would appear as legitimate business expenses, the company assured their clients.
Client 9, however, declined this method. Savvy, it seems, to how wire transfers can be traced, he insisted on delivering his payments in cash by mail. And so he apparently stuffed wads of bills into stamped envelopes, requiring those withdrawals that alerted the authorities in the first place.
The cash got the authorities interested. The delivery method got the prostitution ring furious.
And all because the mail was slow in early February, when Spitzer was trying to set up his now-famous encounter in Room 871 of the Mayflower Hotel.
This set off a chain of 15 phone calls in total, six involving Client 9, and seven text messages, none involving him, which provided the information that helped lead to an indictment, as questions of whether Client 9 could be trusted to make the payment, and how much, were discussed. That the prostitute in question was traveling from New York to Washington to meet her client only complicated matters.
And Client 9’s promise to pay for everything “train tickets, cab fare from the hotel and back, mini bar or room service, travel time, and hotel,” according to the affidavit, apparently did little to soothe the minds of the Emperors Club decision makers.
Nor did Client 9’s loyalty as a customer impress them, even when he pointed out that he had “around $400 or $500 in credit,” though this was the subject of some discussion. Eventually, the go-between informed Client 9 that “the ‘office’ said he could not proceed with the appointment with his available credit,” though that would cover the travel expenses to get the prostitute, known as Kristen, “an American, petite, very pretty brunette, 5 feet 5 inches and 105 pounds,” to his hotel room.
This pushed Client 9 into more negotiations, as they discussed whether he could give the prostitute some cash directly to bring back to the service—a practice high-class prostitution businesses generally avoid to minimize their vulnerability under the law. The Emperors Club employee in conversation with Client 9 suggested that he “could give ‘Kristen’ ‘extra funds’ at this appointment in order to avoid payment issues in the future.” This was unusual, Client 9 was told, but “she was going to make an exception that way a deposit could be made so that he would have a credit, and they would not have to ‘go through this’ next time.”
Whether Client 9 would hand over $1,000, $1,500 or $2,000 and whether he could find a bank to get that money was the subject of more conversations, as was the client’s unwillingness to leave a key for his prostitute at the front desk. This apparent security precaution not only initiated even more phone calls and text messages between the people involved but left the prostitute waiting in a hotel room for him for several hours. A conversation between the prostitute and Client 9 to inform her that he would soon arrive—presumably via a lobby phone—appears to be the only call not captured on the wiretap.
But after much ado, multiple phone calls wondering whether Client 9 could be trusted to pay and negotiating over whether he would have $2,611 in his account or $2,721.41, the appointment between Client 9 and Kristen apparently finally happened between 10 p.m. and midnight on Feb. 13. Minutes into Feb. 14—Valentine’s Day apparently not on her mind—Kristen phoned her contact at the Emperors Club to recount how things went. Though others at the company had their problems with him, Kristen did not. According to the affidavit, “‘Kristen said that she liked him, and that she did not think he was difficult.” They then discussed in glancing terms the client’s taste for unspecified unsafe acts.
And business was discussed as well. According to Kristen, Client 9, ever thrifty, finished his appointment after just two hours, though he paid for four, leaving him with credit on his account. Whether he ever had or tried to make an appointment to take advantage of his savings is not addressed in the charges.
Nonetheless, the evidence seems enough to indict Client 9.
Had Client 9 restricted his dalliance to New York, he would not have been subject to this law. And had he been more timely with his payments and less intent on haggling for his whore, there might not have been enough evidence to link him to the Emperors Club in the first place.
Now Spitzer joins a long line of politicians who have been brought down with a sex scandal. He is not the only apparent hypocrite among them—while attorney general, Spitzer had a hand in prosecuting prostitution rings. The story of the sheriff of Wall Street brought to his knees in such a seamy, illicit way, does, however, make for easy news copy and former targets giggling with glee—or both, as when traders cheered at word of the revelations on Monday and stocks got a half-hour bump.
So if and when Spitzer decides to emerge from the Fifth Avenue apartment he and his family rent from his real estate mogul father—who, in a less sexy Spitzer scandal of a decade ago, bent the law to lend millions to his son’s attorney general campaign—the steamrolled steamroller will have no shortage of people to commiserate with over the years to come.
The Princeton-and Harvard-educated fizzled star will not be the only one toppled by mistakes a smarter person might have avoided. In New York, stumbling stupidly into sex scandals and other mistakes, it seems, is just part of the game.
Just last week, Harlem Assembly Member Adam Clayton Powell IV, heir to one of the most-revered names in local politics, was pulled over on the West Side Highway for drunk driving. He says he co-operated. Other reports said he tried to wiggle his way out of a breathalyzer. No one seems to deny he had a passed-out woman in the backseat.
Powell was twice in the last few years accused of rape, with alcohol involved in the incidents. The charges were ultimately dropped, but if Powell was able to keep more of a distance between women, alcohol and himself, they might never have been brought. (Powell declared his innocence on the latest charge. He has made no mention of a change of plans to run for re-election to the Assembly in the fall or public advocate of the city next year.)
But there are others.
Dutchess County Assembly Member Pat Manning lost his 2006 re-election primary after news surfaced that he had tried to impersonate his rival’s political consultant on a phone call as he tried to get information on a private poll. That, plus the revelation of Manning’s extra-marital affair, helped end the political career of the man who had months before billed himself as the conservative, family candidate for governor.
Then there was Kenneth Gribetz, a Rockland County district attorney whose ex-mistress outed him in 1995 with claims that county workers chauffeured them to their trysts at hotel rooms Gribetz paid for with county credit cards. Or Allan Jennings, the Queens Council member who was censured after five women complained he committed various forms of sexual harassment—including Frank Costanza’s famous “stop short” move and brushing up against a woman at full staff.
Or the more innocent upstate Assembly Member Mike Cole. He was never accused of having sex—just getting drunk and falling asleep on the floor of an intern’s apartment last year, just months after being elected. He was censured by the Assembly, but remains in office. He is up for re-election this year.
And the list goes on and on and on through all sorts of sexual acts and strange liaisons. Spitzer, though, is the only one who seems to have been willing to pay for what he got, which could explain why he was so intent on getting a bargain. His possible five-year jail term and life of shattered possibilities now ahead should provide enough time to think about whether, in the end, he got a good deal.
He made massive withdrawals from his bank.
He ordered his hooker across state lines.
He made his payments directly in cash.
He talked about what he was up to on the phone, for anyone with a wiretap to hear.
In short, he was stupid. And now he could face five years in jail for a crime he did not have to be caught committing.
Thanks to the affidavit filed in federal court, the world now knows that Client 9 of the Emperors Club VIP—who Spitzer all but announced was him in his brief statement to the press on the afternoon of March 10—has a taste for sexual activities that an Emperors Club employee referred to as “things that like, you might not think were safe.”
Whether she meant an interest in asphyxiation or some other violent activity, or whether simply that he preferred to take his prostitutes without a condom, is something the world may never know, especially if Spitzer manages to keep himself out of court by having his lawyers use his very public humiliation and resignation chits in a plea bargain.
What the world does know is that Spitzer was not just a happenstance catch, a john that federal agents were surprised to hear themselves listening to over their headphones in the back of their proverbial white van. On the contrary, Spitzer seems to have been the key that opened the floodgates: massive withdrawals of cash from his personal bank account got people interested in what the governor might be putting $4,300 toward at a time on close to 10 encounters over the past few years. Not bribery and blackmail, they discovered. Just whores.
But the striking thing about the wiretap that ensnared Spitzer and seems poised to be the nail in the coffin of his once-ascendant political career is that the evidence against him might not have been obtained if he had simply paid his bills promptly and accepted the terms laid down by the prostitution ring. Client 9 apparently has only himself and the slow pace of the United States Postal Service to blame.
According to the conversations captured on the wiretap and filed in the affidavit, Client 9 had problems getting his payment in on time. The Emperors Club apparently required payment in advance and preferred payments be delivered by wire transfer. Expenses were rung up to companies named with variations of QAT, so that they would appear as legitimate business expenses, the company assured their clients.
Client 9, however, declined this method. Savvy, it seems, to how wire transfers can be traced, he insisted on delivering his payments in cash by mail. And so he apparently stuffed wads of bills into stamped envelopes, requiring those withdrawals that alerted the authorities in the first place.
The cash got the authorities interested. The delivery method got the prostitution ring furious.
And all because the mail was slow in early February, when Spitzer was trying to set up his now-famous encounter in Room 871 of the Mayflower Hotel.
This set off a chain of 15 phone calls in total, six involving Client 9, and seven text messages, none involving him, which provided the information that helped lead to an indictment, as questions of whether Client 9 could be trusted to make the payment, and how much, were discussed. That the prostitute in question was traveling from New York to Washington to meet her client only complicated matters.
And Client 9’s promise to pay for everything “train tickets, cab fare from the hotel and back, mini bar or room service, travel time, and hotel,” according to the affidavit, apparently did little to soothe the minds of the Emperors Club decision makers.
Nor did Client 9’s loyalty as a customer impress them, even when he pointed out that he had “around $400 or $500 in credit,” though this was the subject of some discussion. Eventually, the go-between informed Client 9 that “the ‘office’ said he could not proceed with the appointment with his available credit,” though that would cover the travel expenses to get the prostitute, known as Kristen, “an American, petite, very pretty brunette, 5 feet 5 inches and 105 pounds,” to his hotel room.
This pushed Client 9 into more negotiations, as they discussed whether he could give the prostitute some cash directly to bring back to the service—a practice high-class prostitution businesses generally avoid to minimize their vulnerability under the law. The Emperors Club employee in conversation with Client 9 suggested that he “could give ‘Kristen’ ‘extra funds’ at this appointment in order to avoid payment issues in the future.” This was unusual, Client 9 was told, but “she was going to make an exception that way a deposit could be made so that he would have a credit, and they would not have to ‘go through this’ next time.”
Whether Client 9 would hand over $1,000, $1,500 or $2,000 and whether he could find a bank to get that money was the subject of more conversations, as was the client’s unwillingness to leave a key for his prostitute at the front desk. This apparent security precaution not only initiated even more phone calls and text messages between the people involved but left the prostitute waiting in a hotel room for him for several hours. A conversation between the prostitute and Client 9 to inform her that he would soon arrive—presumably via a lobby phone—appears to be the only call not captured on the wiretap.
But after much ado, multiple phone calls wondering whether Client 9 could be trusted to pay and negotiating over whether he would have $2,611 in his account or $2,721.41, the appointment between Client 9 and Kristen apparently finally happened between 10 p.m. and midnight on Feb. 13. Minutes into Feb. 14—Valentine’s Day apparently not on her mind—Kristen phoned her contact at the Emperors Club to recount how things went. Though others at the company had their problems with him, Kristen did not. According to the affidavit, “‘Kristen said that she liked him, and that she did not think he was difficult.” They then discussed in glancing terms the client’s taste for unspecified unsafe acts.
And business was discussed as well. According to Kristen, Client 9, ever thrifty, finished his appointment after just two hours, though he paid for four, leaving him with credit on his account. Whether he ever had or tried to make an appointment to take advantage of his savings is not addressed in the charges.
Nonetheless, the evidence seems enough to indict Client 9.
Had Client 9 restricted his dalliance to New York, he would not have been subject to this law. And had he been more timely with his payments and less intent on haggling for his whore, there might not have been enough evidence to link him to the Emperors Club in the first place.
Now Spitzer joins a long line of politicians who have been brought down with a sex scandal. He is not the only apparent hypocrite among them—while attorney general, Spitzer had a hand in prosecuting prostitution rings. The story of the sheriff of Wall Street brought to his knees in such a seamy, illicit way, does, however, make for easy news copy and former targets giggling with glee—or both, as when traders cheered at word of the revelations on Monday and stocks got a half-hour bump.
So if and when Spitzer decides to emerge from the Fifth Avenue apartment he and his family rent from his real estate mogul father—who, in a less sexy Spitzer scandal of a decade ago, bent the law to lend millions to his son’s attorney general campaign—the steamrolled steamroller will have no shortage of people to commiserate with over the years to come.
The Princeton-and Harvard-educated fizzled star will not be the only one toppled by mistakes a smarter person might have avoided. In New York, stumbling stupidly into sex scandals and other mistakes, it seems, is just part of the game.
Just last week, Harlem Assembly Member Adam Clayton Powell IV, heir to one of the most-revered names in local politics, was pulled over on the West Side Highway for drunk driving. He says he co-operated. Other reports said he tried to wiggle his way out of a breathalyzer. No one seems to deny he had a passed-out woman in the backseat.
Powell was twice in the last few years accused of rape, with alcohol involved in the incidents. The charges were ultimately dropped, but if Powell was able to keep more of a distance between women, alcohol and himself, they might never have been brought. (Powell declared his innocence on the latest charge. He has made no mention of a change of plans to run for re-election to the Assembly in the fall or public advocate of the city next year.)
But there are others.
Dutchess County Assembly Member Pat Manning lost his 2006 re-election primary after news surfaced that he had tried to impersonate his rival’s political consultant on a phone call as he tried to get information on a private poll. That, plus the revelation of Manning’s extra-marital affair, helped end the political career of the man who had months before billed himself as the conservative, family candidate for governor.
Then there was Kenneth Gribetz, a Rockland County district attorney whose ex-mistress outed him in 1995 with claims that county workers chauffeured them to their trysts at hotel rooms Gribetz paid for with county credit cards. Or Allan Jennings, the Queens Council member who was censured after five women complained he committed various forms of sexual harassment—including Frank Costanza’s famous “stop short” move and brushing up against a woman at full staff.
Or the more innocent upstate Assembly Member Mike Cole. He was never accused of having sex—just getting drunk and falling asleep on the floor of an intern’s apartment last year, just months after being elected. He was censured by the Assembly, but remains in office. He is up for re-election this year.
And the list goes on and on and on through all sorts of sexual acts and strange liaisons. Spitzer, though, is the only one who seems to have been willing to pay for what he got, which could explain why he was so intent on getting a bargain. His possible five-year jail term and life of shattered possibilities now ahead should provide enough time to think about whether, in the end, he got a good deal.
