FBI Director Robert Mueller is bright and engaging, although he didn’t engage two questions about the Eliot Spitzer case when he met Wednesday with the Tribune editorial board. He did, though, get us thinking anew about the unnamed “Client 10” who allegedly arranged to have a call girl flown to Chicago — and thinking, too, about all the other johns who risk personal ruin as this tawdry case continues to unfold:
Tribune: The governor of New York resigned this morning. I wonder if you might help us understand how his actions might make him vulnerable to the restructuring law?
Mueller: That’s an ongoing investigation that I don’t feel comfortable talking about at this time.
Tribune: So you’re not going to tell us who Client 10 is?
Mueller, affirming and smiling devilishly: … I want to know why you pick on Client 10 as opposed to Clients 1 through 8. You must know something I don’t know.
With that, Mueller gracefully deflected our piercing curiosity. He also steered public curiosity where it’s already headed: Who are the other clients of this high-end prostitution ring? And how could they be so stupid?
No, that’s not veiled commentary on the morals of richly paid prostitutes and their wealthy clients. Much to judge, but not our place. The closest we’ll come to imposing penance is Tuesday’s comment in this space: The soon-to-be-former governor of New York will go to his grave knowing that he caused the greatest hurt to those innocents closest to him in what’s now his shattered life.
Other lives, too, are likely to shatter. In Spitzer’s humiliation they can see their own sorry futures: For whatever foolish reason, a man of power puts himself in a position where criminals have power over him. Transcripts of one wiretapped conversation include a stunning exchange in which Spitzer — a man who arguably could have been president — humbly offers to trot off to an ATM machine in Washington so he can placate a hooker booker in New York who is hassling him about payment protocols.
And Spitzer may have plenty of company. The Emperors Club VIP reportedly represented some 50 women. Even allowing for part-time employment and occasional patronage, that number suggests a business with a whole lot of upscale clients.
Imagine how easy it has been for federal agents to locate every single customer who ever wired payments — as Spitzer evidently did — into the bank accounts of shell companies associated with the Emperors Club.
Why didn’t the johns just send the feds engraved invitations to arrest them for federal financial crimes?
We don’t yet know who leaked the fact that Client 9, unnamed in court papers, is Spitzer. But how long will it be until more names emerge? How long until other men guilty of Spitzerian hubris have to confront their loved ones with the disclosure that has landed like an anvil on Silda Wall Spitzer and her daughters?
If there is good news here, it’s that clout hasn’t rescued Spitzer from his predicament. Speculation that the feds would cut him a deal if he resigned reached such fever pitch Wednesday that Michael J. Garcia, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, issued a statement to deny it: “There is no agreement between this office and Gov. Eliot Spitzer, relating to his resignation or any other matter.”
Nor should there be an agreement in which a public official is allowed to trade his position in return for anything less than the full force of the law.
We’re content to let law enforcement, and if necessary the courts, determine whether Spitzer illicitly tried to structure a $10,000 transaction into three parts, as an unnamed official has asserted to The Washington Post. The same official told the Post that investigators have identified at least eight instances in which Spitzer used the Emperors Club over the past several years.
If true, that’s a lot of legal exposure for Client 9. And, by implication, a lot of legal exposure for the other would-be emperors as well.
