SENATE Republicans are looking to subpoena records held by Gov. Spitzer and his 82-year-old megamillionaire father, Bernard, dealing with a controversial $5 million loan that helped Spitzer get elected attorney general in 1998, The Post has learned.
The unprecedented subpoenas – which would represent a major escalation in the ongoing war between Democrat Spitzer and the state Senate GOP – were requested Friday by Senate Investigations Committee Chairman George Winner (R-Elmira.)
Winner, in a letter to Elections Committee Chairman Sen. Joseph Griffo (R-Utica,) wrote that a recent profile of Spitzer in New York magazine suggested the governor broke state election law in obtaining a loan that helped bankroll his first winning campaign for attorney general.
In the letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Post, Winner told Griffo the article “outlined what may have been a willful effort by Eliot Spitzer and his father to circumvent campaign-contribution limits in New York state law and then conceal their actions . . .
“Accordingly, I believe the Senate Committee on Elections should investigate this matter immediately, and urge you, as chairman, to utilize the subpoena power of the committee to ensure that all of the facts relevant to this matter are known so that we might prepare better reform legislation,” Winner wrote.
Winner, a lawyer, told The Post the subpoenas should be used to find out “what were the guarantees for the loan, what were the provisions for the notes [and] were they executed with original guarantees from the father?”
“Clearly, the bank files for such loans would have them, and certainly, they would be in the possession of the individuals involved, the governor himself and his father, obviously,” Winner continued.
Asked about Winner’s request for subpoenas, Spitzer spokeswoman Christine Anderson declined to comment.
Spitzer claimed during the campaign that he secured the $5 million loan by mortgaging eight apartments his developer-father had given him.
But as his election challenge to then-Attorney General Dennis Vacco neared the end, Spitzer admitted that his father was actually paying off the loans and, therefore, financing his campaign – a possible election-law violation.
“I didn’t realize how necessary it was to be transparent about every personal financial transaction,” Spitzer was quoted as saying in the article.
Winner, whose Investigations Committee may soon issue its own subpoenas for e-mails and other documents involving Spitzer’s alleged use of the State Police to spy on Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno (R-Rensselaer), said he wanted Griffo to obtain the Spitzer documents before the final touches are put on last week’s announced agreement to pass a new campaign-finance law.
He said that the agreement – announced by Spitzer and Bruno on Thursday – was only “conceptual” and noted that it did not address “loan abuse” situations like the one involving Spitzer’s 1998 campaign.
Griffo had no immediate reaction to the letter.