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that bills itself as the world's oldest democracy. we sure do love a strong man. and from teddy roosevelt, all the way up to our reality tv president. nowhere produces more of them than the empire state and i get it. in an age where congress's approval rating hovers somewhere around sewer rats, we want to vote for the politician who can finally just get things done. that was eliot spitzer to a t. but when new yorkers sent the sheriff of wall street to the governor's mansion, we all learned the hard way that white knights can have dark secrets. spitzer was caught breaking his own sex work laws, a level of hypocrisy we could never forget. eliot spitzer blazed a trail through new york that had him in spitting distance of the white house right up until the moment he set himself on fire

this will sound like the setup for a bad joke, but bear with me the change you seek. >> the new york you dream of. begins tonight. >> so there's this honest politician named eliot spitzer, a white night new york official with a reputation so pristine. they called him mr. clean. he rose up the ranks from attorney general to governor by taking down the mafia, as well as wall street banks. >> these are people who are stealing money. they may not do it with a gun, but the result is just as criminal. >> he won the hearts and minds of new yorkers as if he were derek jeter, made out of thin crust pizza, more trusted than the times, more untouchable than the subway handrails. >> he was such a. hopeful person for the people. >> now is our time to build a

government that exists, not for those who hold an office, but for those who pay the bill. >> i probably could have been a great governor. he could have been president. he tripped on his dick governor eliot spitzer is under investigation for allegedly meeting with a prostitute at a washington, d.c., hotel. >> eliot spitzer linked to an alleged prostitution ring. >> the affidavit alleges the prostitution ring operated under the name of emperors club vip. >> one official says that spitzer is referred to as client number nine. >> i can remember the new york times breaking the story and literally saying, holy the tabs loved it, but all the serious papers loved it too, because it was eliot spitzer, the sheriff of wall street. >> somebody who is doing good, doing right, and he's a hero. >> there was just this like, can this possibly be true? it

had so many of the elements of a classic tabloid scandal that it almost felt like it was poorly written. >> i am resigning from the office of governor. >> eliot came out and he made this face that we call the pucker. that image of him was used over and over and over. it was just the perfect encapsulation of, like i used to be. this, like high flying king of and now i'm just, like, eating thank you very much. >> far from being remembered as the man who cleaned up new york, though, spitzer will be forever known for nearly swallowing his own face as he was outed as one of the biggest hypocrites in modern politics. >> that is what infuriates people more than anything. i mean, the fact that this guy was talking about ethics and morality. >> even those who say prostitution is not a big deal point to the hypocrisy in these allegations. >> the hypocrisy that's present here is going to be his his downfall. >> and when a politician obsessed with being a do gooder gets caught with his pants down. the late night material

is endless. >> i sat next to the guy three times, and i didn't pick up on any of this, and i usually have excellent hoarder, but spitzer's sex scandal is not quite like other sex scandals, because with no history of inappropriate behavior with women, his self-righteousness seemed genuine. >> or so we believed. >> the eyes of new york are on us. >> new yorkers loved him. he was a crusader for the little guy. brave, bold. a great leader who did not have time for distractions. and that's the kind of politician we want, right? the guy who cuts through the usual red tape and gets things done. but by the time he got into power, spitzer's noble crusade had been replaced with something darker. why do we keep ending up here? why do we keep placing our hopes in confident men who make big promises, then completely fail to deliver? >> come on. >> i would ask spitzer himself about this, but he stopped returning my texts. so i turned

to eliot spitzer's mentor and friend, lloyd constantine, who'd known him longer than almost anyone else in his life. so my thinking about this interview, i feel like your journey with eliot is the public's journey in the sense that people really thought he was going to be the first jewish president. >> you muscular democrat. >> yeah. and i want you to take us on the journey. >> yeah. >> you've talked about how you thought the presidency was eliot spitzer's manifest destiny, that he was going to be a fighter for the people. at what point did you start to think that? take us back to 1982. you're working for the attorney general of new york, bob abrams, and here comes your summer intern, a young guy named eliot spitzer. what was your impression? >> i was a little bit wary to begin with. you know, wealthy kid from well-known parents. kids like that usually want to have a fun summer. but when eliot walks in, it was kind of love at first sight. there was

an understanding that we both believed that the law was the most powerful instrument of social change, and that the law could be used to help people. >> spitzer's crusade for the people began in earnest. a few years later, when he charged into the manhattan da's office in 1986, one of eliot's early success stories was when he was working as a junior prosecutor, and he was tasked with trying to get the mob out of the garment district. the gambino crime family dominated manhattan's garment district, where they forced clothing manufacturers to use their trucking company to transport goods to retailers most prosecutors went after the mob by following a paper trail from behind a desk, but spitzer had a novel idea to start his own factory, hiring 30 workers and an undercover state trooper to run it and simply waiting for the mafia to come to them. it took several months, but eventually a salesman stopped

by, threatening to break bones literally. >> the very quick and swift message from the gambinos. either use our truck or somebody will be injured in the next six months. >> yeah. >> spitzer always seemed to go beyond just the rigor of an investigation. he didn't want to just read transcriptions. he wanted to listen to the wiretaps and hear how the mob guys talked. there was a visceral enjoyment of the subterranean nature of this. >> i played soccer and this is a little. that's a tough game. i'm not getting into trouble. i was the enforcer. i mean, i was the kid who played left fullback. not because i had real talent, but i took people out. and so it wasn't that i was, you know, somebody came through with a ball. i couldn't really do things other than just take care of them. and so it was, you play hard, you play rough, and hopefully you don't get caught.

>> spitzer had learned that playing rough paid off and riding high on his takedown of the mob. he ran for attorney general a few years later. he lost, but spitzer's crusade was not yet over. >> he was wildly ambitious, wanted desperately, i think, to be president of the united states. eliot was probably the definition of hubris. like i am doing the right thing. the world must lie down before me. >> remember this point while the public saw spitzer as fighting for them, he saw himself as an untouchable hero on a righteous quest. so this won't end well. >> andy anderson, take a seat. look at this. you're wet. disheveled. there's debris hitting you. >> why do you have that on your phone? >> i watch it all the time. hey, listen, we need to be ready for new year's eve. there could be an ice storm or a hurricane. and obviously, confetti. maybe you are ready.

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you can make it happen. >> again. >> voltaren for long lasting arthritis pain relief eliot spitzer lost his first shot at attorney general of new york in 1994, but he went right back to work, becoming a partner at lloyd constantine's firm. >> eliot spitzer worked for your law firm, and your relationship continues and your families become close. you meet his wife, silda. yeah. what did you think of her? >> very smart. you know, i knew that they had been at harvard law together on some level, she was more impressive. but they were equals. they were equals. absolutely. >> that's interesting, because most americans, if they even know of eliot spitzer's wife, silda, they think of her as just the wronged woman. at that press conference. and you're saying there's so much more to her? yeah, she was really protective of their girls and

to a certain extent, had to sacrifice what was a really successful legal career in order for him to sort of be the star. >> it's not what she had hoped for in her life. >> that sacrifice was nothing compared to what she'd faced ten years later. as the wife of a scandal plagued politician. but in 1998, with her full support, eliot ran for ag again and won. >> i'm honored to be here as i declare victory in what has been a long race. >> we will begin a process of creating in the attorney general's office, the preeminent public interest law firm in the country. >> what was different about eliot is that he expanded the jurisdiction of the attorney general's office, particularly with respect to issues on wall street. this was something very unique and very unprecedented. >> spitzer watched as the internet turned the stock market into a goldmine, and stock analysts received kickbacks for overhyping weird internet companies. so while

the average investor was convinced to pour his retirement funds into pets.com, stock analysts were using their bonuses to recreate scenes from the movie boiler room. what play is now, boys? >> let's celebrate senator when the.com bubble finally burst, the federal commission that was supposed to be looking out for investors was not doing nearly enough to help, but luckily, new york's crusader rode in on his white horse to save the day. >> ordinary americans who have been asked to invest have been defrauded. their trust has been violated. >> spitzer realized that there's possibly an opportunity here. there in new york, which is a financial services central. so if bad behavior has happened anywhere in all this, they have jurisdiction. >> so spitzer set about looking for legal tools to make sure he could do exactly what he wanted. new york attorneys general had in their arsenal a powerful 1921 law called the martin act, which prohibited selling fraudulent securities to hoodwinked investors. but

they only used it against small targets, ponzi schemes and the like. spitzer unleashed its full power against wall street, determined to catch stock analysts in a lie. >> the quintessential small investor who was paying the price for this, and i believe it's my job to protect them. >> so spitzer goes to merrill lynch first, and he brings a case against them, which particularly picks on a single analyst named henry blodget. >> we still believe in yahoo as a long term platform. this is really capable of competing with aol. >> there were these instances where he would be on tv saying, these stocks that are the greatest thing since sliced bread. and then there would be him complaining internally in an email like, this is a pos, which you can figure out what that means. so if you're telling the public one thing and you're saying something else that sounds like fraud, eliot was the basis of real systemic change. >> he had exercised more power than massive federal agencies

like the sec. >> did he have more power, or did he just use it? >> well, you know, he exercised it. and the market responded. i represented morgan stanley, one of the targets of one of his investigations. and i talked to, you know, to the chairman and ceo. he wasn't worried about washington. he was worried about eliot spitzer. >> no one thought anybody could put their hands on those companies. and he was able to do that. so he was really the robin hood of that whole effort. >> by taking on the wild west of wall street, spitzer had earned himself a new nickname. >> spitzer has deputized himself as the sheriff of wall street. >> so even though you were on the other side in at least a case or two of his aggressive regulation of various financial industries, you thought that he was doing exactly what that 23

year old first year harvard law student was meant to do. he is using power effectively to help the people. >> he was the most powerful, most successful, and i think most effective state attorney general in the history of the united states. >> that's pretty high praise. >> yes, absolutely. >> this all might sound like hyperbole now that we're on the other side of his shocking scandal and public downfall, but everyone thought this way at the time, and not just in new york. i myself believed that spitzer was on a path that could end up at the white house, but he'd been learning some pretty undemocratic lessons on his way up that he could push boundaries, seize power, and that the people would love him even more. >> you have declared, i have officially, officially, that you are running for governor of the great state of new york, the empire state. >> absolutely. >> i'm going to call it right in a telltale sign of his

hubris, spitzer was so confident he would become governor, he started staffing his administration years before the election. >> one time, spitzer said to me, there's someone i'd like to interview to be lieutenant governor, but i wouldn't want to be rejected. now i realize he's talking about me. and he was right. i didn't want to be lieutenant governor. and at the time, hillary clinton was a junior senator from new york. so i said to spitzer, if hillary clinton becomes president, you pick the new senator, i would be your guy. and spitzer said something to me at that point that was very prophetic. stay out of trouble. and you're my guy. and all i could say to that was, physician, heal thyself 2024 was a wild ride. >> it was like the craziest roller coaster ride i've ever been on in my life. >> that was an whooping. >> tom foreman and special guest. look back. all the best. all the worst. 2024. thursday, december 26th at 11 on cnn.

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>> i'm hanako montgomery in tokyo, and this is cnn. >> closed captioning brought to you by inventhelp. call one ( 800) 710-0020. >> do you have an invention idea but don't know what to do next? call inventhelp today. they can help you get started with your idea. call now ( 800) 710-0020. >> the change you seek, the reform you thirst for, the new york you dream of. begins tonight by the time eliot spitzer's running for governor in 2006, everyone expected him to win. >> in 2006, new york had been stuck in a holding pattern for years. and eliot spitzer, that seemingly upright pillar of moral rectitude, was just the candidate for them. >> polls closed at 9 p.m.. the election was called for spitzer at 9:01 p.m.. the next governor of new york state, eliot.

>> mr. eliot spitzer, was elected governor. with what percentage of the vote? >> almost 70%. it was 69.5. >> it's insane. yeah. >> almost 70% of the vote. by far the greatest plurality in the history of new york. more than franklin roosevelt, more than teddy roosevelt, more than mario cuomo, more than anybody. >> but unlike his illustrious predecessor, spitzer would only last one year in office before self-destructing in a way that absolutely no one had foreseen. so i have a theory of leadership. oftentimes, people rise to positions of power where they are able to remove anyone from their inner circle, who will tell them when they're being an and that moment when they choose to do that often sets the course for their downfall. >> that may have been the case, but in the fall of 2006, silda asked me not to work for eliot. why? she said, you're the only

sort of senior older man that he listens to, and he needs to have some advice. and if you go to work for him, he will stop listening to you. >> but lloyd became a senior adviser to spitzer anyway, because he still believed that his old friend was on his way up. did you notice any change in him? >> i had noticed a change in him prior to the election, a kind of of arrogance which i, you know, had not seen before. >> he didn't sound like a modest guy to begin with. >> well, no, no, this is a kind of, you know, irrationality that culminated on inauguration day. how so? in the first 45 seconds, he gets up, he attacks pataki, and he attacks the senate majority leader, joe bruno. not mentioning their names, but he said new york has slept through much of the past

decade, while the rest of the world has passed us by. you know, joe bruno turns to pataki and says he's talking about us. things he wanted to do required really significant systemic change. it required money. it required legislation. it required cooperation. and he goes after the people he needs in the first 45 seconds. that's not hyperbole. >> so from day one, it was awful. >> from the first 45 seconds of day one, it was awful. >> not everyone will agree with this vision and some will not support these solutions, but progress. we will have. >> they need this governor to govern. they don't need him to be a steamroller. >> one year before he was dubbed client number nine, spitzer had gone from the exalted sheriff of wall street to a reckless steamroller, and then he opted to use his office to start a private war that got its own tabloid nickname

troopergate. what is the troopergate? >> the troopergate thing was a national story because this was eliot spitzer. early on. because of this taunt at the inauguration, there was a combative relationship between senate majority leader joe bruno and eliot spitzer. >> the state of new york owns a small fleet of planes and helicopters that are meant only for official use, but it was an open secret that bruno treated them like air uber without the surge fees upping the ante in the standoff between spitzer and the republican state senate leader. spitzer's aides instructed state troopers to surveil bruno and keep records of his air travel they used the power of the state police to go after a political rival. >> is despicable, possibly illegal, and undermines our democratic form of government. >> it made you realize like, oh, wait, this like avenging angel, this crusader that we're talking about will do shady

stuff. >> let me play devil's advocate for one second. state senator bruno was abusing state aircraft. yep. was there a proper way to stop it? >> just say no. the governor controls the aircraft. so the next time you know, bruno says i need to go to yonkers. i need to go to buffalo. and you say no instead of the easy fix, spitzer had gone into attack mode, which you can do if your own record is spotless. >> the problem was the so-called mr. clean had a lot of dirty laundry. >> nobody has pointed to a single thing, nor will they be able to say that i personally misstep. but i'm taking responsibility. >> eliot spitzer has never publicly admitted when he started soliciting sex workers, nor has he said what particular event might have triggered that choice. some sources put it before his inauguration, which might put his first year in office in a new context. >> he was not in control. so i get a phone call from silda, she says, let's go out for lunch. and she says, who is

this guy? he looks like eliot, but i don't know who this guy is. and of course, i knew what she was talking about. and i said, it's the intoxication of the moment. he's full of all of this pride at getting this amazing electoral result. the man we know and love will be back soon was he. >> no. >> luther. never too much. new year's day at eight on cnn. >> details make the holidays get 2.99% apr. plus eligible owners can get $2,000 on the gv70 exclusively at your local genesis retailers. >> my mental health was better, but uncontrollable movements called td tardive dyskinesia started disrupting my day. >> td felt embarrassing. i felt

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streaming exclusively on max. >> i have felt great disappointment at seeing this situation distract from the good work of many hard working people and a productive first year. >> so it sounds like the first year of the spitzer governorship. >> the only year is a disaster. >> yes. >> rather than getting his big legislative program with scores of items, we had been limited to around 6 or 7, and the number one priority of eliot spitzer was to have the toughest sex trafficking law in the united states. he said that, yes, he wanted it. yes. >> as unbelievable as it sounds, spitzer decided to prioritize making it a felony to knowingly sell travel related services to facilitate

prostitution. an agenda item only sigmund freud could fully appreciate. there, at least, he succeeded. new york's anti-human trafficking bill of 2007 was signed into law on june 6th. we can only speculate as to how soon afterwards spitzer himself started breaking that law. >> spitzer goes from having won a landslide, having been the sheriff of wall street, where people stopped him on the street, to being a governor whose ordinary and i think that must have been really, really difficult for him. >> when eliot spitzer was in the governor's mansion. he would walk around the mansion and look at the portraits and wonder what the former governors would want to say to him. he definitely was looking for spiritual. endorsement. there was so much acrimony involved. it was

rocky. you ready for the grand finale? >> march 9th, 2008. governor spitzer, what does he say? >> i got an email around 10:30 p.m. saying, please be at my apartment at 7 a.m. tomorrow. >> this seems like an unusual request. >> this is an amazing. i knew something was wrong, so i didn't email him back. i just called and he said as early as tomorrow. the new york times will reveal that i have been involved with prostitutes so this guy who's a crusader against human sex trafficking is actually a customer. right? a customer? yes. a john. and i immediately become relieved. why? because now i understand what the hell happened to my friend. he has been painfully aware that he's going to go down at any moment. and it's hard to do your job

while you feel like there's a gun in the back of your head, even if you're the one that's holding the gun. even if, well, somebody is holding the gun. >> on the morning of march 10th, as lloyd drove down to manhattan to be with his friends, they all knew that they had mere hours to formulate a plan before the whole world knew what spitzer had done. so you drive to his apartment in manhattan? yep so i walk in and he says, welcome to a greek tragedy. >> we sit down at the kitchen table. silda eliot and myself. and the first thing is, she said, did you know that he was doing this? and i said, i didn't know. i had no idea. >> and at this point, you still think that governor spitzer can stay, governor? >> absolutely. i had already formulated the plan on the way down to keep him in office. i wrote a speech that i wanted him to give. i contacted shrinks. i contacted a facility

which deals with sexual addiction the spitzer camp was ready to fight, or at least the people around him were. >> spitzer's own feelings on the matter seemed quite different. >> for the first few hours, i'm resigning. i'm resigning today. and i dissuaded. i said, you are. you are not competent to make that decision today. >> while spitzer's inner circle was in their war room in manhattan, lieutenant governor david paterson was 150 miles away in the capital, albany, just going about his day. there was an event that morning that the governor could not do. no problem. paterson had it covered. then a second event. spitzer was still not around. paterson started getting suspicious. >> i felt like the character in a movie where everyone else knows what's going on except the character, but no one had any answers for him until shortly after 1 p.m. when the phone rang. finally, spitzer's secretary calls me. i hear

something about a prostitute and a entrapment or something. so i said, well, what's the result of this? he says, well, the governor is finished. he's going to resign. so i called chuck schumer, who is the senior senator i call hillary clinton, who was the junior senator from new york. hillary clinton is the first one to call back. and she says, david, there was something very ominous about your message. is everything all right? i said, i guess everything's all right, but i'm going to be the governor in about 35 minutes. she goes, oh my god, what happened? this just dead air. how do you explain a sex scandal to hillary clinton as paterson had been warned? >> there was a press conference just after 3 p.m. with the shocking news already splashed across the new york times website. everyone thought they knew what they were in for. >> good afternoon. i have disappointed and failed to live up to the standard i expected of myself. i must now dedicate some time to regain the trust

of my family. >> are you resigning, governor in the wake of this, completely unexpected news, there was just one question on everyone's minds. >> was eliot spitzer really going to try to stay in office welcome to times square. >> that's not in my life. >> cheers. that was so embarrassing. >> new year's eve live with anderson and andy. live coverage starts at eight on cnn. streaming live on max my moderate to severe crohn's symptoms kept me out of the picture with skyrizi. >> phil's symptom relief. at four weeks, many people were in remission. at 12 weeks, at one year, and even at two years. >> don't use if allergic serious allergic reactions,

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>> 808 two one 4000. >> i must now dedicate some time to regain the trust of my family. i will not be taking questions. thank you very much. >> i spoke to a number of sources in new york democratic politics who said they had been told without a doubt that governor spitzer would in fact resign. and then, of course, he did not. >> the new york democrat is said to be weighing his options and bracing for what could happen next. >> we're waiting for the governor to do the right thing. >> as soon as the times broke the story, it was everywhere. and it moved really, really quickly. >> government charged four people with operating a high end prostitution ring known as the emperors club. >> vip client nine mentioned in the criminal complaint is in fact the governor. >> the document states client number nine arranged for a prostitute named christine to travel from new york city to washington, d.c.. client nine said he would pay for everything, according to a

source with knowledge of the investigation. the two met at the mayflower hotel in washington. that encounter took about two hours. on february 13th, the day before valentine's day. >> there are spitzer supporters who think wall street had something to do with this. these moneyed interests, all these enemies he'd made when he was attorney general. they were in on a grand conspiracy. >> i think that's that's that that may well be the case, but. so what? you've been offered things in your life. i've been offered things in my life, and i, know i have agency to act. and this guy had a pretty big agency. okay. >> people like to speculate that this whole case was somehow set up by one of spitzer's very wealthy enemies. he certainly lots of really rich people hated him. i tend to think it's ridiculous, because you'd have to know that he was interested in prostitution, and he was not a guy who, like, grabbed women's women by the butt or seemed

seemed like someone who would be using prostitutes. i mean, so that's what makes the conspiracy a little bit weird. like, you would have had to know that he was vulnerable this way. >> and when the details came out, it was clear that this was not just one moment of weakness. even if someone had set him up that first time, no one forced spitzer to go back for the second or the third, or even the eighth time. nor was anyone forcing him to make stupid mistakes. that almost certainly helped get him caught. that was all eliot spitzer. >> when spitzer started the whole prostitute thing, he was putting money into a small regional bank that was just underneath the money laundering rules. and so the bank reports him like the governor. they know his name. he's the governor. he doesn't just do a transaction that would draw attention. he does it at a place where they would notice in his own name. >> and spitzer was sending these shady wire transfers to an obvious shell company, which soon revealed itself to be a front for a prostitution ring, that the fbi was already

investigating. once those dots got connected, the former sheriff of wall street was done for. >> he ran the rackets bureau at the manhattan da's office. so he knows the way this works. and to the extent that he says, oh, i thought i'd get away with it, either that is simply an outright lie or it is an indication of such massive self-deception that that also says something about what's going on and not going on in this guy's mind. >> right after the first press conference, lloyd and silda spent a furious 61 hours trying to convince spitzer to remain and fight, and for the first time in his life, eliot spitzer chickened out so that, along with me, is trying to convince him not to resign as governor. >> he humored us, i think. i don't think he ever seriously considered it. he wants out. he wants out. he doesn't want to be a hypocrite. >> he wants out because of the sex trafficking laws he pushed for. >> that's the reason part of

it. that's part of it. we made a principled argument here. you're afraid of being a hypocrite. you shouldn't elevate your sense of self over the interests of the state of new york. and the people who elected you in this monumental plurality the press conference 61 hours later. >> becomes iconic for because of. >> because of silda standing by her man. her man. >> in the past few days, i've begun to atone for my private failings with my wife, silda, my children, and my entire family. >> the image of silda spitzer standing beside her husband at the press conference was so powerful. in fact, it inspired an award winning tv series, the good wife, which lasted seven times longer than the actual spitzer administration. >> silda, to give up that much

and then watch him blow it up like that on something fundamentally attacking your marriage, that has got to be the worst ever. >> though many eyes were on silda, she, of course, was not the reason everyone had gathered again two days later. eliot had come to a decision. >> i am resigning from the office of governor. as i leave public life, i will first do what i need to do to help and heal myself and my family. >> this has been one of the hardest, the furthest and the fastest falls from grace that we've seen in american politics. >> a dramatic end to the political career of a man who was once one of the democratic party's rising stars. >> spitzer may have resigned to avoid the scrutiny he knew would come, but he could not outrun an american public that wanted to take in all of the salacious details of his hypocrisy. the sheriff of wall street was dead. long live client number nine. >> the governor was described as a difficult client. what did

that mean to you? >> a difficult client would mean that he didn't feel he needed to wear a condom. >> it could also mean he had some unusual sexual proclivities that we haven't heard about yet. >> a little tmi there, jason, but thank you. >> eliot spitzer sin was hypocrisy. i mean, we're all hypocrites. we are, all of us, a mass of contradictions, and we all know it. and yet when someone is outed as having those contradictions, we want to punish that person, drive them from public life rather than saying, there but for the grace of god go i. it's burn the witch! >> even snl, which had never actually mocked spitzer before, just had to get their jabs in on the newly anointed client. number nine. >> and you wanted to have sex with a hooker, but you didn't want to wear a condom. >> really? really. >> that might not be scary if you were a client number one, but you were client number nine. >> but no detail caught the public's imagination quite like the tidbit that spitzer allegedly kept on his black socks while engaging with sex

workers, even if he did keep black socks on. >> who cares? like, if that's a kink, then lord help us. >> for weeks was the only thing anyone could talk about. new york magazine had a great eliot spitzer cover by barbara kruger, the artist. i mean, it was everywhere. and ashley dupree afterwards for weeks was in the news for the first time. >> we were seeing the face and learning the story of the woman for whose sexual services governor spitzer, allegedly paid thousands of dollars. >> she is the escort known as kristen. >> she goes by the name ashley dupree. >> she already had made music on her myspace page. this was a person who was ready for the spotlight. >> she ended up becoming a columnist for the new york post. >> sirius launched a radio channel just devoted to the eliot spitzer scandal, just so people could, like, talk all day long on sirius about client nine. >> but if you thought that this scandal was the end of eliot spitzer, you'd be mistaken. >> when you're a politician or

a very famous person who goes through a major scandal, you have two choices. afterwards, you can either go away forever or you can not. and eliot spitzer decided to not only come across an artist like luther vandross. >> once in a lifetime. >> he was a boss from the beginning. >> luther said, i have a sound in my head. i got to get it out. you are my shining star. >> my. >> it was the most exciting time in the world. >> his life had extremely joyful moments and some really difficult moments. >> if we were to be able to talk to luther as fans, we'd be able to say. we just love you. >> luther. never too much. new year's day at eight on cnn. >> this is not a drill. subway dropped the price on all their subs. 20% off any sub, any size. >> subway did what any sub. >> yep. >> for a limited time, you get 20% off when you order in the app. hurry and get this deal before it's gone. >> lowes knows the perfect gifts don't have to stretch

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1-800-269-9522. >> that's one ( 800) 269-9522. >> i'm jomana karadsheh in damascus. and this is cnn how did people take it? >> this was a turning point in

american government and politics. how so? because elliot and what he stood for, all of the people in all of these areas, transportation, education, infrastructure, arts and culture who felt that this was the administration that not only would fix this in the empire state, but then go to washington and advance these ideas on a national level, had now gone down. >> people believed in him, you know, so not just people in new york. >> this was a national government information. yeah. and all of that, all of that gone. >> it was an overwhelming loss of a rare leader happening the very same day that bear stearns collapsed, setting off one of the worst financial crises in u.s. history. but the sheriff of wall street had already turned in his badge. >> we have just learned that eliot spitzer remember him? the former governor of new york will not face any charges in

relation to his prostitution scandal earlier this year. >> the u.s. attorney's office investigated and ultimately declined to prosecute spitzer. thank you. so resigning from office was the only punishment spitzer got for his lawbreaking and hypocrisy. the american people can forgive a lot when it comes to sex, but hypocrisy not so much. at least if you're a democrat. so when spitzer ran for comptroller after briefly hosting a cnn talk show filled with way too much passive aggression. stay with us. >> because he hadn't talked enough. >> it was the hypocrisy of his story that i got hung up on. one of the things that a lot of people take offense to is you never face charges under your own law. >> well, the decision was made based upon the standards that were set by the department of justice and made by the u.s. attorney's office. they looked at the evidence, and they dealt with me the way they dealt with everybody else who was in my situation. you really think that? i can tell you absolutely. >> what you did was incredibly reckless. and perhaps more importantly, it was very illegal. as you know, a class e

felony paying for sex, a law you signed, bumping it up to class e, when was the last time you broke that law? 2008. >> that's correct. and and let me tell you, even though it may seem quixotic and hard to to make sense out of, i'm proud that we did sign that human trafficking law. that was the right thing to do. it is important. it is something i believed in then and believe in now and and even though you violated it. that's correct. >> spitzer ultimately lost the comptroller race in 2013, and that was not the only thing he lost. >> eliot spitzer and his wife, silda are divorcing. >> though married for 26 years, the couple had been living in separate apartments for months. >> but don't shed any tears for eliot spitzer. the divorce say in 2016 news breaks that he's being allegedly extorted by a russian woman named svetlana zakharova, who herself claims spitzer paid her for sex work. the exact nature of their relationship remains locked in civil litigation. in the end, we're left with yet another

politician who sold the people of new york a bill of goods. >> governor spitzer, he was the person fighting for the people. he was stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. and i think people wanted to believe in a hero. so when his downfall came, it wasn't just the falling of eliot spitzer. it was the death of a dream. >> look, i fell under his spell like lots of other people. i wish in many ways that he had been satisfied with doing what he was very good at, and had stayed on for another term or two terms. as attorney general. i do think if he had done that, he might have helped stop some of the worst abuses that led to the financial crisis of 2008. >> maybe it's a case where he was externalizing his internal conflict. maybe he thought prostitution was wrong and hookers should be thrown in jail. and that was, you know, side by side in him in conflict with his attraction to prostitutes. if we just throw them all in jail, get them all off the streets, then i won't touch any of them.

>> i interviewed him, must have been 2018. i know he understands. he caused a lot of people in his personal and professional life a lot of pain. i know he's sorry for that, but he certainly hasn't allowed it to consume his life. >> have you ever asked him why he did this? >> oh, he doesn't know. >> he doesn't know. he has no idea. i mean, there's no introspection, no psychoanalysis about. >> i did this because he doesn't want to know. you know, there are people i'm not going to think about why i did this or why i didn't do this. you know, they're not introspective. i'm not saying that that that makes them better or worse. it's just he doesn't want to know any of that stuff. >> and the truth is that that's what the people loved about eliot spitzer. no second guessing, no debate on a crusade charging ahead to systemic change, steamrolling enemies, cutting red tape in his path. his accomplishments were tangible and exceedingly rare, which makes it hard not

to mourn what we may have lost with the downfall of the sheriff of wall street. but it was his zealous belief in his own righteousness that made eliot spitzer's self-destruction inevitable. and that might be why the story is so chilling. former president trump was a steamroller in the white house, and it landed an insurrection on the steps of the capitol. if we can't shake our addiction to strongmen, to those utterly convinced of their own greatness, there will be many more like spitzer in positions of power, posing even bigger threats to our fragile democracy. crusaders wanting their portraits on the walls of history. every governor of new york has the chance to be immortalized in a painting that hangs in the new york state capitol. a self-directed monument to his or her own illustrious legacy. all of them are there. all but two. the first served in the early 19th century and left no likenesses