Spitzer may be guilty of campaign abuses

This is what heppens when the press loves you; they cover for you.

But Spitzer has been getting away with a lot over the years without having to face the consequences, much of it having to do with his campaign finances. As Matthew Vadum of Capital Research Center noted, Spitzer was responsible as attorney general for policing New York’s estimated 60,000 charities and nonprofits, including his family’s $26 million Spitzer Charitable Trust. Most of those assets were invested in hedge and equity funds whose executives made numerous campaign contributions to Spitzer. There is no evidence Spitzer ever recused himself from investment decisions by the board of his family trust. Spitzer was a member of that board despite a State Ethics Commission ruling that high-ranking state officers should not serve as directors or board members of regulated agencies.

Then there is the matter of the $42,555 in contributions Spitzer received from lawyers with the now-disgraced Milberg Weiss law firm in his successful 2002 re-election campaign for state attorney general. As first reported last year by The Examiner, those donations included $10,000 from Mel Weiss and $10,000 from former managing partner David Bershad, who has confessed to participating in kickbacks totaling $11.7 million to plaintiffs in more than 150 securities class-action lawsuits brought by the firm.

When he ran for governor in 2006, Spitzer said he was holding himself and his campaign to “a higher standard,” and claimed to have returned more than $124,000 donated by Milberg Weiss lawyers and associates. But a year later his spokesman refused to say what happened to the donations he received in his re-election race for attorney general.