What are the odds that Spitzer was blackmailed?

[hedgehog]

Did he loudly prosecute other prostitution rings out of some weird mixture of hypocrisy and risk taking, or could it have been a pay-off to the ring he patronized?


Edit: on reading some of the replies, I should make clear that I believe that Spitzer destroyed himself. By all accounts, various people and groups were just waiting for the chance to take him down and started checking him out as soon as the odd transactions turned up at his bank. Apparently, prosecutors were looking into what they thought was a bribery scandal and instead hit pay dirt with a sex scandal. Still, Spitzer willingly and frequently and flagrantly broke the law all by himself with no help from anyone.

To clarify, I did hear someone note that once Spitzer became involved with organized crime, he was subject to blackmail. The speculation is that he took a break from prosecuting corporate crimes to go after prostitution rings at the behest of the people he was involved with.

[Buzz Clik]

1. What are the odds that he broke a laundry list of laws? 100%

End of story.

You can't be blackmailed if you're keeping your nose clean.

[hisownpetard]

2. Bingo.

[Captain Hilts]

5. Correct. Another reason JFK should not have been elected. nt

[Captain Hilts]

3. If he wasn't I'd be really disappointed in the mafia/high fananciers. nt

[gristy]

4. Blackmailed? I don't see that

Do you mean "set up"? Or maybe "retaliated against"?

[madokie]

6. Let me just say this

I have been asking about the blackmail card for some time now for all the dems caving in and it does not, I repeat, it does not gain any traction here at the DU. Why I have no idea but it hasn't and my bet is this, your, post won't either. go figure

Personally I feel that Blackmail is the only thing that explains why what is allowed to happen is allowed to happen. Our Dems are being blackmailed, especially Pelosi and Reid

I too would like to know

[gristy]

8. Can you describe a scenario that fits any of these definitions of blackmail?

black·mail
–noun
1. any payment extorted by intimidation, as by threats of injurious revelations or accusations.
2. the extortion of such payment: He confessed rather than suffer the dishonor of blackmail.
3. a tribute formerly exacted in the north of England and in Scotland by freebooting chiefs for protection from pillage.
–verb (used with object)
4. to extort money from (a person) by the use of threats.
5. to force or coerce into a particular action, statement, etc.: The strikers claimed they were blackmailed into signing the new contract.

[madokie]

10. wouldn't you think that all that info is maybe kept from me or you

usually blackmail is for the most part carried out in the dark not the light of day. Tell me what do you think is the reason for the dems giving in too bushco, why the impeachment was taken off the table, etc. I'm not interested so much in Spitzer but am in the mess we are in that only blackmail explains.

[Eurobabe]

7. Reported today that his bank (whom he prosecuted) was watching

funny transactions in his bank account. The whole thing sounds weird to me.

US is Examining Spitzer's Funds: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/14/nyregion/14spitzer.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

[Frosty1]

9. Very interesting article

http://www.gregpalast.com/

While New York Governor Eliot Spitzer was paying an ‘escort’ $4,300 in a hotel room in Washington, just down the road, George Bush’s new Federal Reserve Board Chairman, Ben Bernanke, was secretly handing over $200 billion in a tryst with mortgage bank industry speculators.

Both acts were wanton, wicked and lewd. But there’s a BIG difference. The Governor was using his own checkbook. Bush’s man Bernanke was using ours.

This week, Bernanke’s Fed, for the first time in its history, loaned a selected coterie of banks one-fifth of a trillion dollars to guarantee these banks’ mortgage-backed junk bonds. The deluge of public loot was an eye-popping windfall to the very banking predators who have brought two million families to the brink of foreclosure.

Up until Wednesday, there was one single, lonely politician who stood in the way of this creepy little assignation at the bankers’ bordello: Eliot Spitzer.

Who are they kidding? Spitzer’s lynching and the bankers’ enriching are intimately tied.