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This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 11th, 2008 at 3:30 PM and filed under Articles, Civil Rights, Politics, Privacy. Follow comments here with the RSS 2.0 feed. Skip to the end and leave a response. Trackbacks are closed.

One Response to “AlterNet: Spitzer’s Scandal: Some Things Don’t Pass the Smell Test”

1. Ian Alterman said:

   I agree. ALOT smells fishy.

   The investigation began some months ago when a bank reported to the IRS that someone was moving certain sums of money in a suspicious manner. The sums were somewhat less than $5,000. However, banks are not required to report suspicious transactions of less than $10,000. In addition, even here it is usually INCOMING sums, NOT outgoing ones that are investigated. As well, as the article notes, given the minimal amounts, why did the bank not simply inform Spitzer, who was, after all, not simply the governor but a major long-time client of the bank? Why, as one person put it, did the bank and IRS “go to DEFCON 4” over sums of less than $5,000?

   Also, as noted in the article, there are some strange “connections” here. The agent in charge of the IRS operation, Mike Garcia, is a long-time friend and former colleague of Michael Chertoff. Even more interesting is the following.

   As we know, one of Spitzer’s “claims to fame” was his “take-down” of certain Wall Street firms, costing them enormous amounts of money in fines, plus jail for some of their employees. One of the hardest hit was Goldman Sachs.

   Guess who was chairman of GS during this time? None other than Henry Paulson, who is now…Secretary of the Treasury, under which the IRS falls.

   Could this investigation be “political payback” – and reach all the way up to the Secretary of the Treasury? Would ANYTHING about this administration surprise us?

   Stay tuned. And watch the Net: stories of this type are appearing rapidly.

   Posted on 11-Mar-08 at 4:55 pm | Permalink