ALBANY – Gov. Spitzer, who last month suspended top aide Darren Dopp for improper conduct in the explosive dirty-tricks scandal, changed his tune yesterday and insisted, “He didn’t violate any rule, any law, any ethical obligation that we are aware of.”
Spitzer, who restored Dopp to his $175,000-a-year job as communications director Monday, also claimed the punishment of his longtime aide was “perhaps arguably too severe.”
Spitzer’s eyebrow-raising comments to an upstate TV station came just days before Dopp is expected to be questioned by the state Ethics Commission.
The panel is probing the use of the State Police by Dopp and other top aides to the governor to gather supposedly damaging information on Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno (R-Rensselaer.)
Dopp’s lawyer suggested earlier this month that his client’s loyalty to the governor might not hold if he were not returned to the state payroll.
Spitzer suspended and denounced Dopp in the wake of a bombshell report from Attorney General Andrew Cuomo in late July outlining details of the scandal.
Aides to Bruno said earlier this week that they believed Spitzer put Dopp back on the payroll to buy his silence before the commission and the Albany County District Attorney’s Office, which is also probing the scandal.
Meanwhile, the GOP-controlled Senate Investigations Committee announced that Spitzer’s inspector general, Kristine Hamann, facing a subpoena to testify about her knowledge of the scandal, had agreed to appear at a public hearing next Thursday.