Brass Knuckles

I’m trying not to let myself get too involved with the Spitzer story – as I mentioned before, it’s being covered very well by the heavies like Michelle Malkin, National Review and the American Thinker.  These are the stories that the big dogs do best; they have the time and resources to do the digging.  I have been moved to comment only a few times so far, in response to commentary that I felt was extraordinary, that I couldn’t help myself.  The first was in response to Nora Ephron’s column in the Huffington Post, in which she argued that this was a big deal about nothing, that Spitzer was simply involved in a little “victimless crime”.  Rich, coming from the other side of the aisle – the ones that were supposed to care about the oppression of women and were supposed to give voice to the voiceless.   I linked to a great column by Harold Meyerson of the Washington Post, where he delves a little deeper into what is really being bought for $5,500 an hour, and it’s not sex or shoe shines.

The Rocky Mountain News’ Paul Campos goes a step further than most other liberal columnists in defending Spitzer with a defense of what most other liberal journalists, including the NY Times, Washington Post and the Huffington Post have only gone so far as to excuse.  Big difference between excusing something and defending it.  The big media understands this all too well - we like to pretend that the left-leaning media are idiots, but they’re not; there are some very smart people out there, and some of them happen to be reporters.

Which brings us back around to Paul Campos of the Rocky Mountain News, who chose to defend rather than simply excuse.  His earth shaking, forehead-slapping defense?  Spitzer was framed.

It’s a violation of the relevant statute to structure multiple cash transactions with the intent of avoiding the $10,000 automatic reporting requirement (by, for example, depositing $5,000 on the same day with two different banks), but it’s quite unclear whether whatever Spitzer did would normally lead to the filing of a suspicious activity report, since such subterfuges are very difficult to detect unless one is already looking for them. This raises the possibility that Spitzer’s financial activities were being closely monitored.

It’s hardly a stretch to imagine that Spitzer, a man with countless enemies in the financial world, would be the target of such a vendetta.

Campos goes on to posit a hypothetical scenario in which bank agents are monitoring every Democratic politician, presumably all the way down to the state level, and watching their transactions like a hawk.  The bank finally sees some withdrawals, calls the DOJ and bing, bang, boom – a conspiracy is born. Of course, we have the evil Republicans at the heart of the matter.

At the DOJ, the Public Integrity Section launches an investigation. This unit itself has come under intense criticism during the Bush administration for investigating nearly six times more Democratic politicians than Republicans. Furthermore, many of the section’s investigations have seemed timed to coincide with elections and the like.

Campos is a law professor - this is a sloppy bit of conjuncture that I’d like to think he’d rail a law student for publishing.  Again, he’s a law professor, but he interprets the Mann Act as such: 

In the course of the sting, Spitzer makes a really big mistake: He pays a call girl to travel from New York to Washington. This puts him in technical violation of an 85-year-old federal law, the Mann Act, which has a long history of being used for politically motivated prosecutions of the worst sort, such as those of the boxer Jack Johnson and movie legend Charlie Chaplin.

Donna Hughes of the National Review has an alternate history for the Mann Act.

The nation’s most recent political sex scandal — New York governor Eliot Spitzer’s involvement with a high-end call-girl ring — will doubtless provide much fodder for the late-night comedy shows. But American prostitution is no laughing matter: The victimization of women and girls, and sometimes men and boys, by pimps has been widely recognized throughout U.S. history.

In the mid-1800s, Congress passed a law criminalizing the importation of aliens for prostitution. In the early 1900s as part of the first international movement against sex trafficking, Congress passed the Mann Act, a law criminalizing the act of transporting persons across state lines for the purpose of prostitution.

In 2000, Congress passed the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA), making the pimping of persons under the age of 18, or pimping by means of fraud, force, or coercion, a serious federal felony. (“Pimping” is an informal term for what the TVPA 2000 calls “sex trafficking”: “The recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for the purpose of a commercial sex act.”) And in 2006, the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act created new federal anti-trafficking crimes and enhanced the penalties of the Mann Act.

It’s hard for me not to get snide toward left-leaning commentators who are ostensibly in a position to “lend voice to the voiceless” and protect the vulnerable, yet whore out their principles so quickly to defend one of their own.  The Mann Act is still relevant and in play; it was originally enacted to protect vulnerable immigrants from being exploited in the sex trade,  and to eviscerate an international trade in de facto human slaves to satisfy the appetites of those privileged with the wealth to “indulge”.

The financial nets that helped catch Spitzer?  Enacted to catch drug dealers and other criminals.  Andy McCarthy at the National Review’s blog, The Corner.

Currency transaction reporting requirements were enacted in the Bank Secrecy Act of 1970, and money laundering was made a crime in overhaul of the federal narcotics laws that took place in 1986.  Believe it or not, Karl Rove did not diabolically dream these provisions up to trap unwary Democrats, nor are they part of George W. Bush’s post-9/11 Politics of Fear. 

Long before we had an international terrorism problem, these laws were developed to target domestic criminal enterprises (especially organized crime and drug trafficking).  The biggest problem many of these syndicates have is hiding the mountains of cash they generate — unexplained wealth being among the best indicators of criminal activity, especially when it comes to the highest-ranking, most insulated crooks.  To the extent these laws (and the Treasury Department’s implementing regulations) have been beefed up significantly, a lot of that happened during the Clinton administration.  (This Treasury Department publication lays out much of the history.)

The landscape has changed for financial institutions; they can no longer plead ignorance of financial malfeaseance, especially when the account belongs to a government official or a corporate executive.  The law has breathed meaning into the “know your customer” regs.  Most banks and brokerage houses have very sophisticated software that uses algorithms to detect “suspicious transactions”, and compliance officers are hard-wired into the systems.  Moving thousands of dollars in cash will raise flags; the hard fact is that we live in an electronic economy.  For most of us that still live “on the grid” and have fully accepted the turn of the century, cash transactions tend to be small, and the exception rather than the rule.  We tend to use plastic, and to a lesser degree, checks.  The Chicago Fed on the phenomenon:

In recent years, however, consumers seem to be changing their minds. Cash and checks are still widely used. Currency is used for the vast majority of payments, mainly for smaller purchases. And checks are the payment choice for about 10 percent of transactions each year. But the percentage of transactions done electronically is growing dramatically. The important role of electronic payments can be seen by looking at the value of payment transactions. Electronic payments account for more than 90 percent of the dollar value of transactions. [emphasis added]

Finally, it was a simply a matter of time before Eliot Spitzer got caught, just as Chalie Sheen and countless other high-rollers.  Former call girl Tracy Quan on the high-priced internet escort service in a New York Times op-ed:

As a former sex worker, I’m puzzled by what is reported to be Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s preference for the riskiest form of indoor prostitution I have ever experienced. Escort agencies are constantly being investigated, infiltrated and spied on.

I worked for two escort agencies when I first started in the sex trade, and both were closed down — not by Mr. Spitzer, but under circumstances that he would recognize. I was terrified when the police raided the apartment that served as a booking office for the second agency. Those of us who were not arrested endured petty racist comments from the officers for about two hours.

I chose to work for an escort service because I was young, starting out in a precarious industry, alone in the city and, like those hapless customers who are arrested in street sweeps, without connections. Working for an escort service was a way to earn my living and keep a roof over my head. But when the chance to work for a madam with a steady supply of reliable clients arose, I was relieved.

That someone like the governor would shop for sex through an Internet escort service is mind-boggling.

I really don’t think that Paul Campos gave the issue much thought before he fired up the old Smith-Corona; he’s a law professor, and I prefer to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Hat Tip – Greg Juarez