Former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer '81 to face investigation for alleged assault

The New York Police Department will investigate former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer ’81 for allegations of assaulting a woman at the Plaza Hotel on Saturday night, according to the the Office of the Deputy Commissioner of the New York Police Department.

According to theNew York Post, an unidentified woman called 911 around 8 p.m. on Saturday night, claiming that she was having a breakdown and had cut her wrist. Following this call, NYPD officers knocked on the door of the hotel room from which the call had come. The New York Post reported that Spitzer came to the door and said to the police officers that there was "no problem.” When police came back a second time a short while after, they noticed broken glass, blood stains and clothing on the floor. The police then began a search of the room.

In follow-up interviews with the detectives, the woman claimed that she was Spitzer’s girlfriend and said that Spitzer choked her, threw her to the ground and threatened her when she said she was going back to Russia, the New York Post reported.

Spitzer did not respond to requests for comment.

According to a statement by the Office of the Deputy Commissioner of the New York Police Department, Manhattan detectives are currently investigating the incident in response to allegations of an assault. The statement further read that the victim indicated that her abuser was Spitzer.

Lisa Linden, Spitzer's spokesperson, denied the allegation.

“There is no truth to the allegation,” she said in an email, declining to comment further.

Spitzer was implicated in a case of prostitution in 2008, when a wiretap revealed that he had intended to spend thousands of dollars on a prostitute who was part of a high-end prostitute ring.

While Spitzer was never charged for his actions, the college student who managed the prostitution ring was sentenced to prison for six months in 2011 after pleading guilty for charges of money laundering and conspiring to promote prostitution, as reported by the New York Times.

The allegations led to Spitzer’s resignation from the post of New York Governor in 2008, a year after his term began.

During Spitzer’s tenure as New York attorney general, he also prosecuted prostitution rings, calling them a "sophisticated and lucrative operation” in an interview with the New York Times.

According to a2011 Daily Princetonian article, after Spitzer’s patronage of the New York prostitution service, Spitzer retreated into solitude. He re-emerged with a “new public image” as host of the CNN talk show In the Arena, which was released in 2011. Spitzer also became a professor at The City College of New York and a columnist for Slate Magazine.

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While a student at the University, Spitzer served as the chairman of the Undergraduate Student Government. During his term as chairman, Spitzer led the student campaign to encourage University divestment from South Africa as a response to the country’s policy of apartheid.