Ashley Alexandra Dupre - No Federal Charges Against Eliot Spitzer ???

Former Gov. Eliot Spitzer will not be charged with any crime for patronizing a high-priced prostitution ring, federal prosecutors announced on Thursday.

The announcement was made by the office of Michael J. Garcia, the United States attorney in Manhattan. Eliot Spitzer announced his resignation in March two days after The New York Times reported that he had been a customer of the Emperor’s Club V.I.P., a prostitution service that charged as much as $5,500 an hour.

Mr. Garcia said in a statement that his office had found no evidence that Eliot Spitzer had used public money or campaign funds to pay for his encounters with prostitutes.

“We have determined that there is insufficient evidence to bring charges against Mr. Spitzer,” Mr. Garcia said in the statement. “In light of the policy of the Department of Justice with respect to prostitution offenses and the longstanding practice of this office, as well as Mr. Spitzer’s acceptance of responsibility for his conduct, we have concluded that the public interest would not be further advanced by filing criminal charges in this matter.”

While Mr. Spitzer has now been cleared, Yusill Scribner, a spokeswoman for Mr. Garcia’s office, would not say whether the decision not to bring charges signaled an end to the overall investigation, which began late last year and was conducted by the F.B.I. and the Internal Revenue Service. Nor would she say whether prosecutors now planned to focus on other clients of the Emperor’s Club V.I.P. or others who had dealings with the people who operated it.

In a statement released minutes after the United States attorney’s announcement, Eliot Spitzer said: “I appreciate the impartiality and thoroughness of the investigation by the U.S. attorney’s office, and I acknowledge and accept responsibility for the conduct it disclosed.

“I resigned my position as governor because I recognized that conduct was unworthy of an elected official.”

“I once again apologize for my actions,” he said in the statement, “and for the pain and disappointment those actions caused my family and the many people who supported me during my career in public life.”

Eliot Spitzer, reached later on his cellphone, said that he would have no comment beyond the statement. Michele Hirshman, a partner at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP who is Eliot Spitzer’s lead counsel, declined through a spokeswoman to comment on Mr. Garcia’s decision.

The announcement by Mr. Garcia, a Republican who has served as the United States attorney for the Southern District for three years, comes as he prepares to leave the post, the premier federal prosecutor’s office in the country, for private work. An announcement in the case, which earlier in the year had drawn criticism from some Democrats who suggested that it was politically motivated, was expected to follow the election, although perhaps not so rapidly.

Mr. Spitzer, the square-jawed crusader who promised to bring ethics to Albany, was elected governor in 2006 by a wide margin after eight years as state attorney general. A Democrat, he had made his reputation as a prosecutor who tackled white-collar corruption so single-mindedly that people nicknamed him “the sheriff of Wall Street,” and his admirers hoped the State Capitol would be a steppingstone to national office.

But then, after he had been governor for little more than a year, a federal affidavit surfaced that said Eliot Spitzer, identified only as Client 9, had arranged for a rendezvous with a high-priced prostitute in Washington on the night before Valentine’s Day.

The allegation rocked the political world. Mr. Spitzer, a product of Princeton University and Harvard Law School, had seemed so strait-laced, people said. As attorney general, he had overseen a task force that prosecuted a prostitution ring that operated behind corporate fronts and escort services.

But in a few hours Eliot Spitzer went from being someone with ambitions beyond Albany to being a name late-night comedians could depend on for laughs. In political circles people marveled that a governor who had once been quoted describing himself as a “steamroller”— with a vulgar adjective — had destroyed his own career.

Eliot Spitzer, who had reinvented the office of attorney general, left behind a lackluster record as governor. He became enmeshed in a political feud with the Republican-led Senate. An inquiry by his successor as attorney general, Andrew M. Cuomo, found in 2007 that the Spitzer administration had misused the State Police as part of an effort to discredit Joseph L. Bruno, the Senate majority leader at the time.

Eliot Spitzer’s administration never fully recovered. In July, the Commission on Public Integrity, a state ethics panel, accused four Spitzer aides — though not Eliot Spitzer — of violating the public officers law. Eliot Spitzer is expected to be called to testify in a public hearing next year that is part of the continuing investigation.