I don't see how any governor can possibly stay in office if
convicted of a federal felony. And if he violated the Mann Act,
that is indeed a federal felony. To quote the relevant portion of
the act: a felony, and upon conviction thereof
shall be punished by a fine not exceeding five thousand dollars, or
by imprisonment of not more than five years, or by both such fine
and imprisonment, in the discretion of the court.
Now, I
guess it could be that if Spitzer is REALLY tenacious, he could
somehow try to plead down to a misdemeanor, and somehow try to hang
on. But how the New York legislature would let him get away with
it, without impeaching and removing him from office, is beyond
me.
UPDATE: First, the current complaint does NOT charge Spitzer or
any of the "johns," but instead charges only the prostitutes and/or
the, uh, pimps. That does not, of course, mean that the next legal
shoe to drop can't be indictments of the johns themselves -- but as
of now, there is not an officially alleged Mann Act violation by
Spitzer. The second thing, though, is that Client 9 (allegedly
Spitzer) clearly, unambiguously had an ongoing relationship with
this "agency." The complaint makes clear that the conversations
back and forth explicitly mention past and future services as well.
So this wasn't some momentary lapse. Forget the moral
judgments: Legally, these actions are against state and/or federal
laws, laws that Spitzer himself used to aggressively prosecute.
Repeated violations of these laws make it even more obvious that
this isn't some one-time problem -- and that as a repeat offender,
as it were, this governor absolutely ought to resign.
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