Smug Self-Righteousness: Such, Such . . . Eliotness!

For all that self-righteousness, this is what we get:

The lawyer who represented a Staten Island man nabbed four years ago as head of a prostitution ring said he will try to get his client’s conviction expunged, since the brothel was busted by then-Attorney General Eliot Spitzer.

Gov. Spitzer has announced his resignation, effective Monday, after the revelation that he allegedly paid $4,300 for the services of a 22-year-old prostitute in a Washington, D.C., hotel room, and amid reports that his hooker habit cost him as much as $80,000 over 10 years.

Vincent Romano, a Brooklyn attorney whose client, Richmond resident Frank Farella, spent two years in an upstate New York prison after Spitzer’s office broke up the prostitution ring, said he will “explore and investigate” the possibility of redress . . .

. . .

Romano characterized Spitzer’s office as “very aggressive, overzealous, mean-spirited” in its prosecution and insisted that overturning the conviction would be the only “proper remedy,” given Spitzer’s own alleged misconduct, which is under investigation by the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan.

Spitzer, in his brief resignation speech that stunned the political world, vaguely acknowledged illicit behavior but did not offer specifics.

“We offered multiple times to voluntarily surrender to the attorney general’s office, to avoid the public humiliation, the perp walk, to avoid public embarrassment, to being removed from your house in the early-morning hours, and all of that was rejected” by Spitzer’s office, Romano said. “They wanted their day in the sun. He wanted his time to shine.”