Spitzer was a thug as New York's AG.Using the threat of bankrupting prosecution as a weapon .

Release the e-mails

Even by the glaring double standards of New York politics, Eliot Spitzer’s belief that there’s one rule for him and another for everyone else makes him distinctive. And not in a good way.

We’ve seen this on tax returns, where a man who asks us to elect him to look over everyone else’s books refuses to release his own. We saw this with his call girls, when a governor who presided over a legal system that prosecuted others for violating anti-prostitution laws arranged for hookers to be delivered to his hotel room during an “official” visit to Washington. Now we’re seeing that same double standard on e-mails he doesn’t want released, notwithstanding a judge’s order.

The e-mails relate to lingering litigation stemming from then-Attorney General Spitzer’s contentious pursuit of American International Group — especially its former chairman, Maurice “Hank” Greenberg. Though Spitzer succeeded in forcing Greenberg out, Spitzer never brought criminal charges, and Greenberg has been fighting to get his good name back.

Howard Smith, AIG’s former chief financial officer and another Spitzer target, has been suing the state to get private Spitzer e-mails he says will show that Spitzer’s campaign against him was less about law than a personal vendetta. AIG’s lawyers claim Spitzer used his private e-mail account to contact company insiders for dirt and cajole reporters into writing flattering stories about the “Sheriff of Wall Street.”

A New York judge ordered the e-mails turned over under the Freedom of Information Law. In an important footnote, the judge noted: “There appears to be no dispute that former Attorney General Eliot Spitzer used a private e-mail account to conduct official business.” As the judge points out, if politicians can escape transparency simply by doing their work over private accounts, the public’s right to know will have little meaning.

This case will go to trial in September. In the meantime, the current attorney general, Eric Schneiderman, is fighting the judge’s order on the grounds that he doesn’t have either Spitzer’s private e-mails or the authority to get them. As the judge noted, the attorney general has cited no case law in support of this position.

You’d think a candidate running for public office as an aggressive watchdog would have the integrity to release the e-mails in question himself — especially if, as he says, he has nothing to hide. If he declines, we’re hoping the law will finally force Spitzer to do something he never seems to have done himself: live by the same rules he’s so quick to impose on others.