A week ago or so, I posted a link to a Political Wire piece that implied that Republican dirty trickster Roger Stone had something to do with Spitzer’s downfall. BadMD correctly pointed out in the comments in the Novak piece cited in the PW column didn’t say what PW claimed.

I said then that I had just posted the link and hadn’t read the Novak column (just skimmed it), but that the story fit a larger set of threads emerging about how this investigation took place. I just picked the PW piece because it was the last one I read.

McClatchy just reported that Stone was involved, though it’s unclear if his information kicked off the investigation:

Almost four months before Gov. Eliot Spitzer resigned in a sex scandal, a lawyer for Republican political operative Roger Stone sent a letter to the FBI alleging that Spitzer ”used the services of high-priced call girls” while in Florida.

The letter, dated Nov. 19, said Miami Beach resident Stone learned the information from ”a social contact in an adult-themed club.” It offered one potentially identifying detail: The man in question hadn’t taken off his calf-length black socks ”during the sex act.”

Stone, known for shutting down the 2000 presidential election recount effort in Miami-Dade County, is a longtime Spitzer nemesis whose political experience ranges from the Nixon White House to Al Sharpton’s presidential campaign. His lawyer wrote the letter containing the call-girl allegations after FBI agents had asked to speak to Stone, though he says the FBI did not specify why he was contacted.

Read the rest. There were rumors of this floating around soon after this broke, and the timeline on all of this is interesting, to say the least. It’s also interesting to see how many resources the FBI brought to bear on Spitzer vs. the Vitter case or Randall Tobias. Harpers has the details.

None of this excuses Spitzer, but that doesn’t excuse any political motivation, if there was any, on the part of Justice, either. Worth keeping an eye on this story.

(via TPM and Balloon Juice)

Update: Wow, what horrible writing. I fixed the opening paragraph to actually, um, make sense.