(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-03-15 00:10

Lawyers' Relationships

Individual relationships among the lawyers probably won't be an issue. Two of the three assistant prosecutors handling the probe, Daniel Stein and Rita Glavin, weren't in the prosecutor's office while Pomerantz and Hirshman were there. The third, Boyd Johnson, was handling minor drug cases during Hirshman's last months in the office.

Pomerantz and Hirshman do bring to Spitzer's defense team an intimate knowledge of many of the major decisions made by the US Attorney in the 1990s.

A 56-year-old Brooklyn native, Pomerantz was a law clerk for former US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart before joining the prosecutor's office. He rose to oversee the appellate unit. After working in private practice, he returned to run the criminal division.

Hirshman spent 11 years as a US prosecutor, including a stint as chief of the public-corruption unit. She left in 1999 to become Spitzer's top aide when he was New York attorney general.

Also part of the team is Theodore Wells, who unsuccessfully defended former vice presidential aide Lewis "Scooter" Libby last year for lying about the leak of the identity of a US intelligence agent.

Represented Torricelli

Pomerantz and Wells represented former US Senator Robert Torricelli, a New Jersey Democrat who was the focus of a four- year investigation into his personal and campaign finances. US prosecutors in New York closed a criminal investigation in January 2002 without filing charges.

Prosecutors will focus first on the facts, the strength of their evidence and the length of Spitzer's alleged involvement with the Emperors Club.

If the case against Spitzer is ambiguous or the law is murky, arguments advanced by the Paul Weiss lawyers may prevail.

"It is a clubby place," said Andrew McCarthy, former chief assistant US attorney, who worked under Pomerantz and Hirshman and was Garcia's onetime boss. "It always made a difference to me if it was someone who served with me in the office. It didn't mean I would necessarily cut the person a break but I was probably more inclined to listen to the person more."

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