They found him spending his OWN money on his own vice instead. Were they abusing their powers, misusing the apparatus of investigation in place, because they were in too deep and had their prey in their sights? Linsday Beyerstein of Majikthise points out that there's something fishy--Starr-like--about the way the probe switched focus on a dime:
http://majikthise.typepad.com/majikthise_/2008/03/spitzer-and-sus.html...
It's not clear exactly when the corruption investigation began, but it seems like the DOJ knew early on that Spitzer might be mixed up in something sex-related. Investigating vice crimes seems a little outside the purview of Public Integrity Section, as described on its website:
The Public Integrity Section oversees the federal effort to combat corruption through the prosecution of elected and appointed public officials at all levels of government. The Section has exclusive jurisdiction over allegations of criminal misconduct on the part of federal judges and also monitors the investigation and prosecution of election and conflict of interest crimes. Section attorneys prosecute selected cases against federal, state, and local officials, and are available as a source of advice and expertise to other prosecutors and investigators. Since 1978, the Section has supervised the administration of the Independent Counsel provisions of the Ethics in Government Act.
The Public Integrity folks could argue that they had good reason to check up on Spitzer because he was doing the kind of suspicious banking that money launderers sometimes use. If a public official is acting like that, it's fair to wonder whether he's trying to hide bribes or embezzled funds. But it seems unlikely that a few thousand dollars in sneaky transactions would trigger a federal investigation of a private citizen.
If they the feds were really checking up on corruption, why didn't the initial QAT investigation peter out? They've cited no evidence that Spitzer was taking in unexplained QAT-related income, nor that he was spending money that wasn't his to pay QAT. As the aforementioned NYT article delicately phrases it: "Last summer, employees at a large New York bank detected something suspicious: Gov. Eliot Spitzer was moving around thousands of dollars in what they thought was an effort to conceal the fact that the money
was his own, federal officials said on Tuesday." (Emphasis added.)
The authorities have given us no reason to believe that Spitzer was exploiting his position as governor for personal gain. Yet it was the Public Integrity section that went to the Attorney General and got permission to bug Spitzer's phone in order to find out what kind of business he was doing with QAT.
The corruption allegations were just a smoke screen. If the feds want to spend federal dollars busting Eliot Spitzer for taking women over state lines for immoral purposes, I guess that's their preogative. There's pretty good evidence that Spitzer broke the (stupid, archaic) law. Spitzer gave them the ammunition. I'm not opposed to "making an example" of high profile offenders, within the the law and the norms of prosecutorial discretion. One legitimate goal of the criminal justice system is deterrence. It's okay to throw the book at someone to send a message, if the message is "don't break the law." It's not okay to direct the justice system capriciously to settle scores.
If the DOJ really thinks that it's important to enforce the Mann Act, and that Spitzer's a good case to drive home that point, fine. But if that's the goal, let them do it openly and then defend their actions as the rational, dispassionate pursuit of justice.
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