Feds Probe NY Atty. General Hopeful
Republican state attorney general candidate Jeanine Pirro said Wednesday she is under federal investigation for allegedly plotting to secretly record her husband to find out whether he was having an affair.
In the draft of a statement she planned to release at a New York City news conference, Pirro said "nothing happened here that is, or should be, the business of the United States attorney's office."
"Sometime last year, I came to believe that my husband was seeing another woman. I was angry and had him followed to see if what I suspected was true," she said in the statement, provided to The Associated Press. "Although I spoke about taping him, there was no wiretapping by me of anyone. There was anger, and frustration, and nothing more."
Pirro, former district attorney of Westchester County, just north of New York City, said that "placing a recording device on one's property to intercept a conversation involving one's spouse is not a crime."
She complained she was being investigated for "speaking in anger about doing something that it is lawful to do, and which I didn't do."
She called the probe "personal and highly improper," adding: "I don't condone any prosecutor prying into the personal lives of married couples."
Two people familiar with the situation, who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because Pirro had scheduled the afternoon conference, said she was overheard by authorities having a telephone conversation with former New York City Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik in the middle of last year. They said that Pirro suspected her husband, Albert Pirro, might be having an affair and that she and Kerik, a private security consultant, discussed possibly placing a recorder in a room to listen in on him.
The two people said the recording device was never used and that a Kerik investigation turned up no firm evidence of an affair.
The sources said Pirro was approached by two FBI agents last week and informed she was under investigation by the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan. Heather Tasker, a spokeswoman for U.S. Attorney Michael Garcia, said she could not confirm such an investigation.
Pirro is running against former federal Housing Secretary Andrew Cuomo in the attorney general's race.
Albert Pirro is a millionaire lobbyist who served 11 months in federal prison after being convicted on tax fraud charges in 2000. He also embarrassed his wife by fathering an illegitimate daughter after they were married.