A documentary about the rise and fall of Eliot Spitzer will be shown at the Tribeca Film Festival.

The festival unveiled part of its lineup Wednesday.

The work-in-progress film about the former New York governor is directed by Alex Gibney, whose “Taxi to the Dark Side” won the 2007 documentary Oscar.

Spitzer resigned in 2008 in a prostitution scandal. According to the festival, the film “explores the hidden contours of this tale of hubris, sex and power.”

The Tribeca Film Festival will open on April 21. It runs through May 2.

Source: AP

The New York Times does not have the right to gain access to sealed applications for wiretaps in the investigation of the prostitution ring once patronized by former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, a U.S. appeals court ruled on Friday.

The panel of judges in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit in New York overruled a lower court judge’s order in February granting the newspaper’s application for information on wiretaps of the “Emperor’s Club” ring.

Spitzer, a Democrat, resigned as governor on March 17 last year after the government charged four people with running a high-priced prostitution ring. Spitzer was identified by The New York Times as a client.

Source: Reuters Read the complete article here

A U.S. federal judge ordered the unsealing of documents in an investigation that linked former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer to a prostitution ring, potentially shedding more light on a scandal that forced Spitzer to resign.

Thursday’s ruling was a result of a request by The New York Times to unseal documents that outlined the prosecutors’ probable cause for wiretapping two cellphones belonging to the prostitution ring.

Judge Jed Rakoff ruled on Thursday that the public’s right to know about an investigation that led to the resignation of the governor outweighed any privacy concerns, especially since the names of other clients were to be redacted.

The materials to be unsealed were affidavits and other documents that prosecutors filed in support of their request to wiretap. They must be released by Tuesday, the judge said.

They do not include transcripts or recordings of any conversations, said David McCraw, a lawyer for The Times. The newspaper had asked for everything in the file and was told the wiretaps did not produce any material that warranted going in the file, McCraw said.

Spitzer was forced to resign last March shortly after The Times reported he was a client of the prostitution ring under investigation.

The resignation of the Democratic governor rocked Washington and Wall Street, where Spitzer had created enemies through his aggressive investigation of fraud cases in his previous post as attorney general of the state.

Spitzer was never charged with a crime. Four organizers of the ring were charged and pleaded guilty, putting an end to the criminal case.

Source: CNBC

Disgraced “Love Gov” Eliot Spitzer dodged federal charges Thursday in the prostitution scandal that destroyed his career.

After avoiding indictment and further humiliation, the one-time pit bull prosecutor publicly acknowledged his interstate trysts with high-end hookers for the first time since the scandal broke in March.

“I acknowledge and accept responsibility for the conduct [the investigation] disclosed,” Spitzer said in a statement, again apologizing for his sexual shenanigans.

The nine-month federal probe found no misuse of public or campaign money, but it confirmed Spitzer was a repeat client of the Emperors Club VIP and arranged multiple hookups with traveling call girls.

The former governor “acknowledged … that he was a client of, and made payments to, the Emperors Club VIP,” Manhattan U.S. Attorney Michael Garcia said.

Garcia said there was no need to file charges because Spitzer used personal money to pay for the trysts. The Justice Department usually doesn’t prosecute johns.

Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau also said he would not prosecute Spitzer.

“The guy lost his job, apologized and was publicly embarrassed. I don’t believe in kicking someone when they’re down,” he said, noting, “It would only be a misdemeanor anyway.”

Spitzer, in his second year as governor, resigned March 13 after he was captured on a government wiretap booking a $4,300 hooker for a Washington liaison.

Spitzer’s role soon became public – along with the details of his lurid evening with buxom brunette New Jersey girl Ashley Dupre.

The pair spent two hours inside room 871 of the Mayflower Hotel on the night before Valentine’s Day, while Spitzer’s wife, Silda, was home in Manhattan.

In addition to Dupre’s fee, Spitzer, 49, picked up the tab for the tattooed 22-year-old’s train ticket from Manhattan, her cab fare and drinks from the hotel room’s minibar.

Dupre’s lawyer, Don Buchwald, had no comment on the feds’ decision, but said, “Ashley is pleased that this matter is behind her.”

Reports indicated Spitzer spent up to $80,000 on prostitutes – and that he preferred to keep his socks on during sex.

Four others linked to the Emperors Club have pleaded guilty to federal charges. The lawyer for hooker booker Tanya Hollander, who faces a year in jail, said she deserves the same sentence as Spitzer: no time.

“Spitzer is much the more egregious actor here,” lawyer Michael Farkas said. “And it is Tanya Hollander, a minor participant, facing jail. That’s just not right.”

Source: NY Daily News

Video of former Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s call-girl going wild “in some very interesting sexual situations” will soon be available for everyone to see.

According to a news release by the company’s founder Joe Francis, Girls Gone Wild will soon release videos of Spitzer’s prostitute, Ashley Dupre, letting it all hang out during spring break in 2003, long before she became famous for bringing down the New York governor.

“We have hours of footage of Dupre including her in some very interesting sexual situations,” Francis said

Dupre, 22, and Francis have been involved in litigation over the footage, but she dropped the $10 million lawsuit last week.

A Girls Gone Wild spokesman said the videos could be released within a month, or possibly sooner.

A call to Dupre’s lawyers was not immediately returned for comment.

Source: AMNY

Ashley Dupre may be out of the prostitution business after the scandal that ousted ex-Gov. Eliot Spitzer from office, but she’s still “touched” by her fans.

Dupre logged onto her MySpace blog over the weekend, breaking months of silence to reach out to her supporters.

“Thank you all so much for taking the time to send me a bit of strength and inspiration via e-mail or comment,” the high-priced hooker-turned-government witness wrote on Saturday in response to well-wishers.

“Your words have touched me, and I thank you for that … with all my heart, I love you guys!!!” Dupre, 22, gushed.

An aspiring pop star, Dupre has already cashed in on the sensational case, raking in hundreds of thousands of dollars from selling her songs online.

She is better known as the prostitute “Kristen” whose tryst with Spitzer at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington D.C. on Feb. 13 brought an end to his once-promising political career.

Dupre also had a message for those who expressed less encouraging sentiments.

“I love you too, because it makes me push myself and want it even more,” she said.

The last time that Dupre wrote to her fans came soon after she was publicly identified as the hooker recorded on tapes talking about Spitzer’s sexual preferences and dangerous preference for going condom-free.

“Yeah, I did it,” she told her fans.

Source: NY Post

The woman accused of being the primary booker for the prostitution ring patronized by Eliot Spitzer is expected to plead guilty this week to charges related to her role in the ring, people involved in the matter said Monday.

The woman, Temeka Rachelle Lewis, 32, is expected to plead guilty in federal District Court in Manhattan to charges of money laundering conspiracy and conspiracy to commit interstate travel in aid of racketeering, one of the people said. She would be the first of the four defendants charged in the ring’s operations to have her case adjudicated.

Lawyers for the three other defendants charged with operating the ring — which the authorities said arranged for wealthy men to meet women in fancy hotels across the United States and Europe — have been negotiating possible guilty pleas with Manhattan federal prosecutors, according to court papers filed last week.

Two of the three are expected to plead to charges soon, the people involved in the matter said.

Mr. Spitzer announced his resignation as governor on March 12, two days after reports that he was the man referred to as Client No. 9 in court papers filed in the case against the ring, the Emperor’s Club V.I.P. He could face criminal charges, possibly stemming from transactions to pay for at least half a dozen meetings with prostitutes.

Several former prosecutors and defense lawyers said the movement toward resolving the charges against Ms. Lewis and her codefendants suggested that prosecutors were nearing a decision on whether to prosecute Mr. Spitzer. The pleas do not indicate clearly what decision the government might reach, they said.

“It’s an indication — it’s not definitive” that a decision is near on Mr. Spitzer, said Patricia A. Pileggi, a criminal defense lawyer who served for 25 years as a federal prosecutor, five of them as the chief of the public corruption unit in the United States attorney’s office in Brooklyn.

Brandy Bergman, a spokeswoman for Mr. Spitzer, declined to comment, as did Rebekah Carmichael, a spokeswoman for the office of Michael J. Garcia, United States attorney in Manhattan, which is prosecuting the prostitution case.

Ms. Lewis did most of the booking for the ring, according to prosecutors, and a half-dozen of her conversations with Mr. Spitzer about arranging a Feb. 13 liaison with a prostitute in Washington were secretly recorded by the F.B.I. and were described in court papers.

Ms. Lewis’s lawyer, Marc Agnifilo, said he had no comment on whether she was cooperating with the government.

“However, I can say that I am privy to the contents of the audio tapes and other evidence,” he said. “There is substantial information independent of anything Ms. Lewis might say that shows that others are complicit in these offenses.”

Murray Richman, who represents Mark Brener, the 62-year-old Israeli émigré charged with running the ring, said that he was working toward reaching a plea agreement for his client, and that the matter could be resolved soon. Mr. Brener has been held without bail since his arrest on March 6. Like his codefendants, he was charged with violations of the Mann Act, money laundering conspiracy and conspiracy to commit interstate transportation in aid of racketeering.

A lawyer for Tanya Hollander, 36, a nutritionist who only worked part time for the ring, also said that her case could be resolved soon.

“We’ve been actively discussing this matter with the government, and believe we will be clarifying a possible resolution in the coming weeks,” said the lawyer, Michael C. Farkas.

A lawyer for the fourth defendant, Cecil Suwal, 23, who prosecutors said ran the ring’s day-to-day operations, did not return a call seeking comment.

Source: NY Times