Scandal: Police investigating claim Eliot Spitzer choked woman in Plaza Hotel

The article says the two knew each other for the past two years and may have been fighting over the woman’s plan to return to Russian Federation.

Manhattan detectives are investigating allegations of an assault and “the victim has indicated the suspect was Eliot Spitzer”, Detective Adam Navarro said. They met Saturday afternoon at a room booked for her at The Plaza Hotel and had an “amicable” conversation and he left.

Hotel personnel called the police after seeing the woman’s agitated state and her cut, the source said.

The accuser, a woman in her 20s, had a cut on her arm and had been rushed to the hospital, according to initial reports. She said it happened in his hotel room, where two of them went after spending some time at the bar.

Spitzer, through a spokeswoman, denies the allegation. Spitzer later released a statement on Monday saying: “The woman who initially made the allegation was not my girlfriend”.

Hospital staff contacted police, who spoke to the woman and she told them she was leaving shortly for Moscow and did not want to press charges, the officials said. Spitzer acted appropriately at all times, his attorney said.

“…She was going back to Russian Federation, and he got upset and started throwing her around, choked her, threw her to the ground and threatened her”.

The woman’s cell phone is now in the hands of police, who obtained a search warrant for it Sunday night, a senior law enforcement official briefed on the investigation said. He was also dating Democratic strategist Lis Smith for the past two years.

Riding that populatrity, Spitzer cruised to an easy win for governor in 2006.

Detectives were trying to determine whether Spitzer, whose political ascent ended in 2008 when he resigned from the governorship amid a prostitution scandal, was involved in an incident on Saturday at the luxury Plaza Hotel, a police spokesman said. He was named as a prostitution ring patron during a federal investigation but wasn’t charged.