Spitzer Opens Up on Sex Scandal

(April 6) - More than a year after a prostitution scandal forced him to resign in disgrace, former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer talked about his fall from grace in an interview with NBC's "Today Show."

In the last few months, Spitzer, who was once dubbed "the sheriff of Wall Street" for taking on the rich and powerful as attorney general of New York, has embarked on a new career path as a media commentator on the economic crisis. On Monday, Spitzer spoke for the first time about the scandal that brought him down.

"This is something that has caused excruciating pain to [my wife] and my daughters," Spitzer told Matt Lauer. "It’s something that I carry with me every day because of the pain I’ve caused. And so I’ve tried to balance: The obligation to speak is vast but also the pain to my family has been enormous."

Spitzer said he cannot justify his behavior.

"There are no excuses. I have tried to address these gremlins; confront them," he said. "What I did was an egregious violation of trust to my family, to my colleagues, to the state, and I’ve paid a price and appropriately so."

Spitzer's affair was first brought to light in an article published in The New York Times in March 2008. It was revealed that Spitzer, who was then governor of New York, was a customer of an exclusive prostitution service that charged him as much as $4,000 a session. He announced his resignation two days later.

In November, federal prosecutors ended an eight-month investigation that found no evidence Spitzer had used public money or campaign funds to pay for his encounters with prostitutes.

Spitzer told Lauer that getting caught "crossed my mind, but like many things in life, you ignore the obvious at a certain moment because you simply don’t want to confront it."

Spitzer said his wife and children have forgiven him.

Read the full interview on the "Today Show" Web site.