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 ALBANY---It was dirty politics in full gear as five weeks before Election Day it has been revealed that former Westchester district attorney Jeanine Pirro, Republican candidate for Attorney General, is under investigation by the FBI for allegedly engaging in illegal wiretapping to try and catch her husband in a suspected adulterous affair.
Pirro, 55, who is being opposed by Democrat Andrew Cuomo, the former secretary of HUD and son of former Governor Mario Cuomo, denies that she broke the law, denies that any wiretapping was done and has called the investigation a "political witch hunt and smear campaign...timed to affect a statewide election".
In a Manhattan news conference, an angry, defiant and emotional Pirro said that the allegations are an outrage to the people of the state and said that there needs to be a federal investigation of the felony of leaking sealed court documents.
She vowed to remain in the race and said that the only thing she was concerned about was "keeping my family together, as I've said for many years, and making sure we have a special prosecutor appointed".
Pirro's husband, convicted in 2000 of 66 counts of federal tax fraud for which he served 11 months in a federal prison, has been a source of embarrassment to his wife for years, causing serious damage to her political career.
In 1995, Al Pirro fathered a child with a woman who worked for the Florida branch of his law firm and it was proven he was the father following a court-ordered paternity test.
Jeanine Pirro had been forced to abandon her campaign in the late 80's as GOP candidate for lieutenant governor due to allegations about her husband's alleged ties to mob-connected businesses. A year ago she abandoned her campaign against Hillary Rodham Clinton for the U.S. Senate after her husband sandbagged her from behind the scenes.
The leaked court documents indicate that Pirro had discussed secretly taping her husband whom she suspected of having an affair. At the news conference Wednesday, Pirro said that "sometime last year, I came to believe that my husband was seeing another woman. In the midst of matrimonial discord, I was angry and had him followed to see if what I suspected was true. Although I spoke about taping him, there was no taping by me of anyone. There was anger, frustration and disappointment".
She said that the investigation is sexist and politically motivated by an overzealous prosecutor, U.S. Attorney Michael Garcia for the Southern District of New York. "There is no way, when I have the opportunity to be the first woman attorney general in the history of this state, that I'm going to be pushed out of a race because somebody wants to delve into the personal lives of my husband and myself. I'm standing up for myself and standing up for women".
She says that Elliott Jacobson, one of the U.S. attorneys assigned to investigate her, prosecuted her husband's tax evasion case in 1999 and that she would seek to have him removed from the case.
Pirro has hired an attorney to represent her in the matter. FBI agents told her last week she is under investigation.
The leaked documents reportedly indicate that Pirro had contacted former New York City police commissioner Bernard Kerik who is now a private security consultant, and allegedly discussed placing a tape recorder in a room on the family boat in an effort to catch her husband in a suspected affair. Kerik was being recorded in connection with an unrelated matter.
Kerik's attorney also stated that nothing criminal occurred in regard to his discussion with the Pirro, that no tape recording of her husband was conducted. 9-28-06
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© 2006 North
Country Gazette
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