You remember Kenneth Langone, don’t you?
Mr. Langone is the co-founder of Home Depot who chaired the New York Stock Exchange compensation committee that approved Richard Grasso’s $140 million pay package. As a result, he is a defendant along with Mr. Grasso in New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer‘s lawsuit to recover alleged overcompensation paid by the NYSE to Mr. Grasso. As this previous post from over a year ago indicates, Mr. Langone does not think much of Mr. Spitzer’s lawsuit.
Well, in this delicious follow-up OpinionJournal op-ed, Mr. Langone updates us on Mr. Spitzer — who he calls “the full-time New York state attorney general and part-time fund-raiser for his political ambitions” — and his use of the high-profile lawsuit against Messrs. Grasso and Langone to promote his political career.

First, Mr. Langone notes Mr. Spitzer’s inflammatory public statements regarding Mr. Langone at the outset of the litigation (a favorite Spitzer tactic):

A little more than a year ago I was obliged to defend myself publicly against a legal smear. Eliot Spitzer, the full-time New York state attorney general and part-time fund-raiser for his political ambitions, called me “unsavory,” “deceptive” and “tainted.” When many in the media were uncritically swayed by his posturing, Mr. Spitzer then pledged to “put a stake through” my heart.
This metaphorical threat to my cardiovascular system aside, the occasion for all this brash talk was the attorney general’s assertion that I was a lawbreaker. I tricked some of Wall Street’s keenest minds, so the accusation goes, into approving a portion of Dick Grasso’s compensation when he headed the New York Stock Exchange.

Then, Mr. Langone proceeds to review what has been learned through the discovery process in the lawsuit so far:

[The other NYSE board members’] testimony is clear and consistent. Of the six directors deposed thus far who served on both the compensation committee and the full board, each has said they were not deceived in any way. They all confirm that, as head of the NYSE compensation committee, I provided them and the board with complete and accurate information about Mr. Grasso’s proposed compensation–and that they approved it.
Pressed for examples, they cited one-on-one meetings with compensation experts, committee meetings, conference calls, comprehensive written documentation, full board meetings, as well as annual presentations I gave both to the committee and the board that included detailed handouts and unfettered opportunity for discussion and debate.

And, contrary to Mr. Spitzer’s statements at the outset of the case, what has been Mr. Spitzer’s reaction to discovery of this information? Mr. Langone lays the wood to the Lord of Regulation:

And confronted with these hard facts in full view, Mr. Spitzer’s public response was flat, total silence.
Since the attorney general seems to be lying low of late–no more press releases every time he goes to the water cooler–allow me to summarize.
Here’s a case alleging deception, in which nearly everyone involved says that the full details were provided repeatedly. The public official who brought the case has indulged garish profiles of himself to publications like Vanity Fair, People and New York magazines, while at the same time resisting scrutiny of key facts in the case. And while his office recently said it is low on funds to pursue Medicaid fraud, he is devoting multiple lawyers to this case — which will benefit the state not one nickel. Medicaid spending by the way costs this state more than a quarter of its budget, in excess of $40 billion.

Mr. Langone concludes by boring in on the lack of judgment and troubling tactics that have been a consistent theme of prosecutions of unpopular business executives during this post-Enron era of criminalizing merely questionable business judgments:

The reliability of Mr. Spitzer’s judgment, . . . should be an issue of prime concern when those votes are cast. But he also has a troubling method of making loud legal threats, strong-arming witnesses, and intimidating boards and companies into destructive concessions. . . Coercing settlements through fear, as anyone can see, is far different from delivering justice.

Read the entire piece. It is a wonderful unmasking of one of the most insidious demagogues on the current American political scene.
Update: Bill Dyer notes and comments on one of the more frightening NY Times articles of the year.