Eliot Spitzer accused of choking woman during fight at The Plaza
By Jamie Schram, Larry Celona and Bruce Golding
Former Gov. Eliot Spitzer, the infamous “Client 9” who resigned amid a prostitution scandal, was accused of choking a woman at The Plaza hotel, law enforcement sources told The Post on Sunday.
Police rushed to the hotel after Svetlana Travis, 25, used her cellphone to call 911 at about 8 p.m. Saturday to say she was having a breakdown and had cut her wrist, the sources said.
The cops went up to the $1,000-a-night suite and Spitzer answered the door.
“Is there a problem?” they asked the disgraced ex-Love Guv.
“Everything’s fine. There’s no problem,” he responded, according to the sources.
The officers left, but called 911, telling an operator to phone Travis back. Travis told a dispatcher that she no longer needed help.
The cops went back anyway to check, although by then, she had left the room, the sources said.
After Spitzer opened the door a second time, the cops spied broken glass, bloodstains and clothing on the floor and started a search inside.
Travis reappeared, and the cops called EMS, which took her to Mount Sinai West Hospital, where she told staffers Spitzer had attacked her, sources said.
His spokeswoman, Lisa Linden, later said, “There is no truth to the allegation.”
In an interview with a second set of cops after midnight, according to a source, Travis “said that she told Spitzer she was going back to Russia, and he got upset and started throwing her around, choked her, threw her to the ground and threatened her.
“She then broke a glass, cut herself and called 911.”
Sources told CNN that Travis claimed to be Spitzer’s girlfriend.
In follow-up interviews with detectives, she gave conflicting accounts of what happened, then stopped cooperating, sources said.
The NYPD got a warrant to search her cellphone and the room for evidence, and cops were seen standing guard outside the room on Sunday evening.
But sources said the woman might already have left for Russia.
“She’s totally uncooperative and said that she was leaving and did not want to press any charges,” a source said.
Despite this, the NYPD has opened an investigation, which is being led by Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce.
Spitzer has yet to be charged with a crime, police said.
The corner room, No. 1541, is at the end of a long hall and is one of the hotel’s Edwardian Suites, which are nearly twice the size of a normal room and feature Louis XV-style furnishings, gold bathroom fixtures and butler service.
Spitzer and Travis were at one of the hotel bars having drinks before he used a credit card to take the suite, sources said.
During the 2008 romps that led to him being dubbed “Client 9” in court papers, Spitzer traveled to Washington, DC, for a night with call girl Ashley Dupre at The Mayflower hotel.
Details of his hooker habit also included the claim that he would wear midcalf, black dress socks during sex. It was not clear if he was wearing them Saturday.
“He was fully dressed,” a police source said. “We don’t know if he was wearing black socks.”
In her 2013 memoir, ex-prostitute Rebecca Woodward alleged that Spitzer once pinned her to a bed and choked her during a $1,500 role-playing tryst in a Murray Hill apartment.
Although Spitzer’s then-wife, Silda Wall, stoically stood by him when he resigned, she never helped the randy pol campaign during his failed comeback bid for city comptroller in 2013.
The couple announced late on Christmas Eve that year that they had split. The move came one day after The Post published exclusive photos of Spitzer going to and leaving Lis Smith’s apartment building.
Smith was a spokeswoman for then-Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio, who jettisoned her after news of the relationship broke.
In December, The Post exclusively revealed that Spitzer and Smith had broken up.