Unlike NRO’s Andrew McCarthy, former Giuliani lieutenant in New York’s U.S. Attorney’s office, Daniel Henninger is willing to take an honest look at the damage politically driven political prosecutions pushed by the likes of Giuliani and his younger soulmate, Eliot Spitzer, actually do to people. The axe Henninger is grinding is that Scooter Libby is being railroaded; that may be true, I honestly don’t know. But Henninger doesn’t shy away from discussing earlier prosecutions:
It was ever thus that big cases produce drama that’s hard to resist. Not least is the spectacle of a once-in-a-lifetime defendant, a Scooter Libby, virtually bankrupting himself to avoid guilt. Labor Secretary Ray Donovan’s 1987 remark on acquittal will explain why unto eternity: “Which office do I go to to get my reputation back?”
No dramas will be written, though, about the aftermath for such a defendant. But maybe one should. Consider the case of Salim Lewis.
Thirty years ago on Wall Street, Salim “Sandy” Lewis was a household name. His father Salim co-built Bear Stearns, and he in turn made his reputation in the high-stakes corporate-merger cycle of the 1980s. He worked without legal or disciplinary taint until he was 49. In 1986 a federal prosecutor named Rudolph Giuliani indicted him for securities violations.
His accuser was Boyd Jeffries, the criminal acolyte of famed financial criminal Ivan Boesky. The case itself was arcane. Outraged at a short-selling practice legal at the time, Mr. Lewis urged Jeffries to engage in a stock transaction to thwart the short sellers. A subsequent court called what he did “an act of market vigilantism, in which Mr. Lewis in no way personally profited.” And indeed the short-selling practice he attacked was later outlawed. Still, his own act was illegal.
Rudy Giuliani indicted him on 22 counts. He pleaded guilty to three, facing 15 years. Judge Mary Johnson Lowe reduced it to three years probation, an act of now-antique proportionality. The SEC got an injunction banning Mr. Lewis for life from the securities business; this was the core of a reputation the court record had shown steeped in good works. He sought to restore it.
In 2001, he received a pardon from President Clinton (later called “a bona fide pardon on the merits” by a federal judge). The SEC bar order remained. He again sought relief in court, and this past summer Judge William Conner of the Southern District (aka Wall Street) lifted the lifetime bar, saying “we cannot ignore the inequity inherent in the injunction.” It took only 20 years.
Nor does innocence guard reputation. Back then prosecutor Giuliani flamboyantly arrested Richard Wigton (30 blameless years with Kidder, Peabody) and a youthful arbitrager named Timothy Tabor. They were handcuffed. Two years later, the charges against both were dropped. No matter. Both had been led through the media bonfire. They were ruined.
This is an aspect of Mr. Giuliani we would do well to keep in mind as people assess his fitness for the presidency. And if, God forbid, Eliot Spitzer should become a presidential threat, the same certainly applies to him.