Eliot Spitzer, who resigned as New York governor in 2008 amid reports that he was a client of a high-priced prostitution ring, is now at the center of a new criminal investigation, according to officials, after a 26-year-old woman said he choked her when they were alone in a room at the Plaza Hotel.
However, Spitzer’s lawyer on Monday said that the woman had apologized by e-mail for making up the allegation.
“There is no case here,” said the lawyer, Adam Kaufmann, who added that he had given the Manhattan District Attorney’s office a copy of the e-mail and who also provided a copy to the New York Times. “There was no assault.”
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On Saturday night, the woman, whose name was not released by the authorities, made a call to 911, saying she had cut her wrists, said a law enforcement official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the continuing inquiry. When detectives arrived at the Plaza Hotel, Spitzer, a combative onetime prosecutor who once delighted in calling himself a “steamroller,” was in her room, trying to calm her, Kaufmann said.
The police took her to Mount Sinai West, formerly St Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center. Another law enforcement official said she told hospital employees that Spitzer had choked her.
Kaufmann gave a different version of events. He said Spitzer had heard from the woman last week.
“This is someone that he had a relationship with in the past,” Kaufmann said, but he declined to say how long Spitzer had known her or how the two had met.
Kaufmann said she told Spitzer: “I am in New York and I am going back to Russia on Sunday — I would like to see you on Saturday.”
She asked him to book a hotel room and Spitzer did so, Kaufmann said. On Saturday afternoon, the former governor visited her at the Plaza Hotel and they talked for less than an hour — amiably, Kaufmann said — about her plans upon her return to Russia.
Spitzer left the hotel, but heard from her again a couple of hours later, he said. This time, she sounded distraught and asked to see him again.
Kaufmann said Spitzer went back to the hotel at about 7pm and found her in “a highly agitated state,” adding that she threatened suicide, made a superficial cut in her wrist and called 911, but then tried to cancel the call.
She left the hospital on Sunday and flew to Russia as scheduled, Kaufmann said.
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