He’s got e-mail
By Post Editorial Board, March 22, 2014 | 10:16pm
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Back when he was still Sheriff of Wall Street, Eliot Spitzer said his pursuit of American International Group was a matter of enforcing “simple rules of transparency.” Transparency, he liked to say, was a basic ingredient for markets to function properly.

But if transparency is important for companies operating in a market, surely it’s even more vital for public officials in a democracy. Which is why we find it so interesting that the former state attorney general and governor filed an 84-page motion last week asking state Supreme Court Justice Christopher Cahill to quash a Freedom of Information Law suit seeking Spitzer’s private e-mails from his time as attorney ­general.

The e-mails are being sought by the former chief financial officer for the AIG, Howard Smith. Smith is seeking these documents as part of his defense against a civil-fraud suit Spitzer initiated against him in 2005. Smith claims Spitzer’s private e-mails will show the then-attorney general’s pursuit of AIG was based on his personal bias, not the law.
For his part, Spitzer says no such e-mails exist. He’s also asking the judge to reject the request, on the grounds that FOIL requests apply only to government agencies, not private citizens.

We leave it to others to hash out the legal fine points. But when this case came before Cahill in 2012, he pointed out in a footnote that “there appears to be no dispute that Spitzer had “used a private e-mail account to conduct official business.” He went on to underscore the obvious: If politicians can escape scrutiny simply by doing their work via private e-mails, we lose all hope for government accountability and transparency.

After Cahill ruled, another judge reviewing the case said Spitzer had to be heard from. But being brought into the suit personally is no doubt the last thing Spitzer wants. Because it means he might be asked questions about his actions and e-mails he would have to answer under oath.

We look forward to Judge Cahill’s decision. We hope it will mean that a self-promoting sheriff who demanded his targets turn over every last bit of information he sought will finally have to live by his own rules.

And that it will make any other New York pol tempted to escape public accountability by taking his dirty work private think twice.

Spitzer tries to block the former AIG bigs from his e-mails
By Carl Campanile
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Disgraced former Gov. Eliot Spitzer has filed legal papers to block the former bosses of insurance giant AIG from gaining access to his personal e-mails.

The decade-old feud dates back to Spitzer’s tenure as state attorney general, when he brought civil fraud charges against AIG and its leaders, CEO Hank Greenberg and CFO Howard Smith. Some of the charges are still pending.

Smith filed suit in 2008 to compel the Attorney General’s Office to obtain and release Spitzer’s e-mails from a private account to try to prove he engaged in biased, unfair prosecution against them. Spitzer had moved on to the governorship by then.

Spitzer, who later resigned in a call-girl scandal, urged a judge to toss out Smith’s Freedom of Information Law lawsuit.

“Private individuals like Mr. Spitzer are not subject to FOIL, and cannot be named as respondents in FOIL proceedings for the purpose of securing records from them,” Spitzer lawyers Andrew Celli and Katherine Rosenfeld said in the 31-page motion to dismiss the suit, which was filed in Albany state Supreme Court.

The public-access law covers only state agencies, not former government officials who are out of office, Spitzer’s legal team argued.

In prior public statements, Spitzer insisted that no private e-mails about his handling of the AIG case exist. The latest legal papers don’t mention the issue.

The Attorney General’s Office had said it searched Spitzer’s office accounts and had not found anything related to the AIG cases. But the court then ruled that the AG’s Office also had an obligation to search Spitzer’s private e-mail accounts.

Spitzer’s lawyers responded in their motion: “No court of which we are aware has ever required an agency to reach out and obtain records from a former employee in the manner sought here.”