This is Spitzer going after Grasso about an affair with his secretary
NEW YORK POST: November 6, 2007 -- FORMER New York Stock Exchange Chairman Dick Grasso was secretly grilled by investigators about whether he'd had an extramarital affair and fathered a love child, a new book reveals.
In "King of the Club - Richard Grasso and the Survival of the New York Stock Exchange," out today from Collins, CNBC correspondent Charles Gasparino writes that the questions were posed last year during a grueling deposition as part of a 2004 lawsuit filed by then-State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer.
The suit, which is still unresolved, seeks the return of more than half of the $190 million compensation given Grasso during his eight-year tenure as chairman on the grounds that it violated state laws governing not-for-profit organizations.
While much of the testimony was eventually made public, some was not - including a tense back-and-forth in which Avi Schick, then Spitzer's head of nonprofit investigations, suddenly got personal. Gasparino writes that Schick asked the long-married Grasso about his relationship with "a woman named Karen Ross, the sister of someone Grasso described as his 'best friend growing up.' Ross had sent Grasso . . . e-mails that made Schick believe that she and Grasso were more than childhood friends, that they'd had an affair, according to Grasso's attorneys and others involved in the case.
"Adding to Schick's suspicion about their relationship were documents that Spitzer's investigators discovered showing that Grasso had paid part of the college tuition of Ross' daughter," the book says.
Schick then asked Grasso "point-blank whether Ross' daughter was related to him 'in any way' - in other words, whether she was a love child. Grasso's attorney exploded: 'I just don't think it's an appropriate subject of examination. It has nothing to do with the case. And it's private information!' "
Gasparino writes, "Schick asked again. This time, Grasso looked at his attorney, who nodded that he should answer. Grasso then flashed Schick that famous Grasso death stare and answered, 'No.' Grasso was exhausted but happy that he had survived the ordeal."
Grasso's lawyer, Gerson Zweifach, did not return our call for comment.
). I like Dershowiz, though I don't always agree with him, because he is truly a man of principle. He holds dear the principles of liberty and freedom and he often opposes the government when it meddles too much in the private lives of citizens..
