The woman who accused Eliot Spitzer of choking her at The Plaza Hotel in New York City on Saturday recanted and apologized in an email before flying back to her native Russia, according to the former governor’s lawyer.
“There is no case here,” Spitzer’s attorney, Adam S. Kaufmann, told The New York Times on Monday. “There was no assault.”
The former New York governor is accused of attacking Svetlana Travis on Saturday night after she apparently told him she was going back home. According to the Times, Spitzer was in the room when detectives arrived. The incident is being investigated by the New York Police Department, along with the district attorney’s office, which declined TheWrap’s request for comment.
The article goes on to say that officers then took the woman to Mount Sinai West, where she apparently told hospital employees that Spitzer had choked her.
Kauffman has yet to respond to TheWrap’s request for comment. But in his statement to the Times, he did not deny that Spitzer and Travis knew each other, saying only that, “this is someone that he had a relationship with in the past.”
The New York Post reported on Tuesday that Travis, a “$5K-a-night hooker who lives life of luxury,” made similar allegations in 2013 when she filed assault charges against another man, claiming he grabbed her by the neck and “hit her head on the countertop.” But court records show the case is no longer pending and that man’s lawyer claims Travis “made false accusations against my client.”
According to the Post, cops believe that Travis used the byline “Svetlana Z” for an article titled “Sex is Sex, but Money is Money” in which she details how she developed a roster of rich clients.
The story has quickly become front-page news in the Big Apple. The New York Daily New says it talked to a woman claiming to be Travis, who said she was already back in Russia. She said she initially accused Spitzer because she was suicidal.
“If I didn’t say Eliot started (it) all, I think I would be hospitalized in some mental home for a few months. I made up the story in order to not be hospitalized,” the person claiming to be Travis wrote in an email to The Daily News.
Spitzer, who has also held TV gigs at MSNBC, CNN and Current, denied the allegation through spokeswoman Lisa Linden.
In 2008, Spitzer famously resigned as governor amid a prostitution scandal in which he was identified as “Client 9.” His story was the inspiration behind the CBS hit drama “The Good Wife.”