Spitzer Probe: Is the Fix In?

We've been chronicling the Eliot Spitzer follies for several months now, and all indications continue to point to the fix being in surrounding the Dirty Tricks Scandal involving Joe Bruno, with the latest allegations coming from state commission employees, who say former communications director Darren Dopp is being set up as the fall guy.

THE state commission supposedly probing the Dirty Tricks Scandal faces a revolt from employees who believe it's improperly steering the investigation "away from Gov. Spitzer," commission insiders say.

Several disgusted senior officials, as well as lower-level workers at the Commission on Public Integrity, have decided to resign or are close to doing so, the insiders told The Post.

The resignation threats come as aides to Spitzer turn over what one source called "embarrassing" information about the scandal in response to a subpoena from Albany District Attorney David Soares, who has also been accused of covering up for the governor.

"The feeling is that [Commission Executive Director] Herb Teitelbaum has been steering the investigation away from Gov. Spitzer to [former Spitzer aide] Darren Dopp, not going after the governor and others in the executive chamber where the evidence points," said a source with direct knowledge of the situation. "People on the inside are embarrassed by the situation and some are considering quitting," the source continued.

Two sources, meanwhile, also said commission staff is convinced that Teitelbaum is secretly providing inside information on the commission's probe to Spitzer Special Counsel Richard Rivkin and to another Spitzer aide, Robert Hermann, Rivkin's former law partner who now heads the governor's Office of Regulatory Reform.

"Teitelbaum is giving the governor's people information that should only be kept within the commission," one source said.

Commission spokesman Walter Ayres denied the charge. Hermann did not return a call seeking comment.

Read the rest.

Outside of Fred Dicker at the NY Post, little attention has been paid to this scandal.

Spitzer must wake up every day saying a prayer of thanks for the D after his name.

Did One Spitzer Aide Threaten Another?

Now that Eliot Spitzer has wisely junked plans to hand out driver's licenses to illegal aliens, he's far from in the clear.

More problem lies ahead in his dirty tricks campaign against Joe Bruno.

For instance, did his political director threaten his communications director?

The Albany DA (an ally of Spitzer, by the way) would like to know.

A top aide to Gov. Spitzer is expected to be asked by the Albany district attorney if he or others threatened former Spitzer communications director Darren Dopp with dismissal if he refused to sign a controversial affidavit on the Dirty Tricks Scandal, it was learned last night.

The question will likely be posed to Spitzer policy director Peter Pope, who has been summoned to appear before DA David Soares as soon as today as part of a potentially explosive new investigation of whether Dopp, a central figure in the scandal, committed perjury when he signed the statement, a source said.

"Pope is expected to be asked if he or others threatened Darren with termination unless they signed the affidavit," the source said.

Pope, along with Spitzer counsel David Nocenti and Sean Patrick Maloney, the governor's first deputy secretary, helped prepare a sworn statement signed by Dopp on July 22, a day before Attorney General Andrew Cuomo released a blockbuster report on the use of the State Police by top Spitzer aides to gather purportedly damaging information on Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno (R-Rensselaer.)

Question: How would the rest of the media treat this case if it were a Republican doing this?

UPDATE: Hot Air links. Thanks!

Allahpundit also notes an egregious tax grab by Spitzer.

UPDATE II: Michelle Malkin also links. Thanks!

UPDATE III: Spitzer held a DC press conference along with the congressional delegation from New York, regarding dropping the licenses for illegals scheme. Full of sophistry, solipsism and santimony, it's all pretty much Bush's fault. As we predicted, he'll be back trying to weasel this plan through.