In a rare dust-up, it looks like a Democrat is beginning to be held to account for wrongdoing against a Republican official by a fellow Democrat: Gov. Eliot Spitzer indefinitely suspended his communications director and reassigned another top official today after Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo's office issued a scathing report accusing the governor's staff of using the State Police for political purposes.
The report was a devastating blow to a governor who had promised to bring a new dawn of ethical responsibility to state politics and validated growing outrage among state Republicans about Mr. Spitzer's politicization of the governor's office.
The report said that the governor's staff ordered the State Police to keep special records of Senate majority leader Joseph L. Bruno's whereabouts when he traveled with police escorts in New York City and to recreate records if they did not exist. The report said that the acting superintendent of police, Preston Felton, took an unprecedented role in assisting requests from the governor's staff and the media for information related to the Senator's whereabouts.
And the report concluded that there was an orchestrated campaign by the governor's office to obtain and provide information to the news media, with the help of the State Police, to essentially discredit Mr. Bruno, the state's top Republican.
The findings of the report were endorsed by Mr. Spitzer's own Inspector General, Kristine Hamann. The attorney general's report does not say any laws were broken by the governor's staff.
The governor said he accepted the findings, saying his administration had "grossly mishandled" the situation.
Spitzer denies having personal knowledge of the spying and leaking to the press. Cuomo doesn't obviously believe him.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
In the case of Schumer's staff unlawfully obtaining then-Maryland Republican Lt. Gov. Michael Steele's credit reports, Schumer walked away unscathed. Congressman Jim Mc Dermott's (D - WA) disclosure of private telephone conversations between then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich and his top lieutenants has resulted in a court-ordered damages ruling against him, but the case remains on appeal, with major media -- including ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, The Associated Press, The New York Times and The Washington Post -- filing a brief supporting his right to engage in warrantless wiretapping.
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