How did that investigation into Ashley Alexandra Dupre and the Emperor's Club VIP start anyway?

Gawker claims Vanity Fair has two whole reporters investigating the theory that Spitzer's enemies on Wall Street might have tipped off the feds to his hookering habits.

It sounds plausible enough. But Spitzer made so many enemies, and frequented call-girl rings, that even after spending nearly an hour re-reading the details of the investigation into the Emperor's Club VIP it is impossible to speculate intelligently on the matter.

But we do know that Roger Stone, the eminently tasteful Republican consultant hired by Spitzer's archenemy Joe Bruno to harass Spitzer's dad, owned up to writing the FBI a letter about what he knew of Spitzer's proclivities around the same time the investigation apparently opened.

But that was in the fall of 2007, by which point most of the Wall Street bigs Spitzer had crossed over the financial-crime crackdown of 2001-2003 were presumably back to counting their money.

But would the FBI and the IRS pursue a joint money laundering/prositution case on the recommendation of a guy like Stone? Could the Emperor's Club VIP have been a legitimate target of investigation without the clientele of Eliot Spitzer? And if you wanted to embarrass Spitzer, would you really go through the trouble of trying to get a federal case launched? Maybe if you were Dick Grasso. But wouldn't the National Enquirer have worked just as well?