'Call girl' El-bent on probe
Into Spitz 'assault'
Lawyers for a reputed Russian call girl charged with shaking down ex-New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer want a special prosecutor to investigate her claims that the disgraced pol choked her.
“I don’t think she was ever given a fair shake as the victim of this assault,” attorney Joseph Murray told Justice Charles Solomon Tuesday in Manhattan Supreme Court.
The grand-larceny charges against Svetlana Travis Zakharova, 26, stem from a police investigation into her claims that Spitzer had roughed her up during an argument at the Plaza hotel in February 2016.
“Let’s say you’re correct. What does that have to do with the underlying charges here?” Solomon asked Murray.
“Mr. Spitzer has, in my view of the evidence, committed several crimes, which I think should be investigated,” the lawyer said. “It looks like robbery, unlawful imprisonment, witness tampering.”
Assistant District Attorney Stuart Levy insisted that the incident inside Spitzer’s $1,000-anight suite at the Plaza was “fully investigated already.”
But Zakharova fled to Russia days after the violent quarrel and couldn’t be interviewed, Murray pointed out.
“We offered for her to come and talk to us, but she never came,” Levy responded.
The judge told Murray he could write a formal letter requesting a special prosecutor, but that he wasn’t sure it would be fruitful.
Murray also asked that he be permitted to have an expert give Zakharova a polygraph test at Rikers, where she’s being held on $1 million bond, to explore the veracity of her abuse claims.
“You can test her all you want, but it’s not going to carry any weight with me,” the judge said.
In court papers, Zakharova says Spitzer flew into a rage after she refused to have sex with him. He choked her, threw her on the floor and kicked her luggage toward her head, the papers state.
Pulling eight $100 bills from her wallet, he ripped them in half one by one while yelling, “You’re a Russian whore,” the filing says.
She called the cops but Spitzer convinced her not to file assault charges and to leave the country, papers allege. He even drove her to Kennedy Airport, she claims.
But the tables have turned in her absence. When authorities investigated her abuse allegations, they uncovered the alleged extortion scheme.
She was arrested on Oct. 10, 2016, when she returned to the country and was charged with grand larceny for extorting $400,0000 in hush money by allegedly threatening to expose their two-year affair to family and media if he didn’t pay up.
A spokesman for Spitzer previously said, “Any allegation that Mr. Spitzer suggested she not fully cooperate with the police is entirely false.”
Spitzer was forced to resign in 2008 amid a prostitution scandal.