New York governor
Eliot Spitzer has told senior advisers that was
involved in a prostitution ring, The New York
Times reported Monday.
Spitzer is
scheduled to make an announcement Monday afternoon. Spitzer
officials wouldn't immediately comment on the story, posted
on the newspaper's website.
Spitzer, who made
good on a campaign pledge to the LGBT community to
introduce a same-sex marriage bill, has promised to sign a
marriage bill into law should one reach his
desk. He is 48, married, and has three
daughters.
Details about the
prostitution ring were not immediately clear. But last
week, federal prosecutors in Manhattan filed conspiracy
charges against four people accusing them of running a
prostitution ring that charged wealthy clients in
Europe and the U.S. thousands of dollars for
prostitutes.
The Website of
the Emperors Club VIP displays photographs of the
prostitutes' bodies, with their faces hidden, along with
hourly rates depending on whether the prostitutes were
rated with one diamond, the lowest ranking, or seven
diamonds, the highest. The most highly ranked
prostitutes cost $5,500 an hour, prosecutors said.
Spitzer has built
his political legacy on rooting out corruption,
including several headline-making battles with Wall Street
while serving as attorney general. He stormed into the
governor's office in 2006 with a historic share of the
vote, vowing to continue his no-nonsense approach to
fixing one of the U.S.'s worst governments.
Time magazine had named him ''Crusader of the
Year'' when he was attorney general.
But his stint as
governor has been marred by several problems, including
an unpopular plan to grant driver's licenses to illegal
immigrants and a plot by his aides to smear Spitzer's
main Republican nemesis.
Spitzer had been
expected to testify to the state Public Integrity
Commission he had created to answer for his role in the
scandal, in which his aides are accused of misusing
state police to compile travel records to embarrass
senate Republican leader Joseph Bruno.
Spitzer had
served two terms as attorney general where he pursued
criminal and civil cases, and cracked down on misconduct and
conflicts of interests on Wall Street and in corporate
America. He had previously been a prosecutor in the
Manhattan District Attorney's Office, handling
organized crime and white-collar crime cases.
His cases as
state attorney general included a few criminal prosecutions
of prostitution rings and tourism involving prostitutes.
In 2004, he was
part of an investigation of an escort service in New York
City that resulted in the arrest of 18 people on charges of
promoting prostitution and related charges. (Amy
Westfeldt, AP, with additional reporting by The
Advocate)
