New York (CNN) New York police say they're investigating whether former Gov. Eliot Spitzer is tied to an alleged assault at a hotel in Midtown Manhattan. 
 
 A 25-year-old woman alleged that Spitzer choked her inside a room at the Plaza Hotel on Saturday, two law enforcement sources briefed on the investigation told CNN. 
 
 "The victim has indicated that the subject is Eliot Spitzer," the New York Police Department said in a statement released Sunday. "Through an ongoing investigation, we are attempting to further establish the identity of the subject and the nature of the incident." 
 
 The former governor has not been charged with any crime. 
 
 A spokeswoman for Spitzer denied the assault accusation. 
 
 "There is no truth to the allegation," spokeswoman Lisa Linden said. 
 
 A statement prepared by Spitzer's attorney and released by the spokeswoman Monday night details the former governor's account of what happened at the hotel. The statement also claims the woman has sent an email recanting her accusation. 
 
 The bottom line, according to Spitzer's attorney: "There was no assault or criminal activity of any nature on the part of Mr. Spitzer." 
 
 Broken glass, cell phone seized 
 
 Police went to the hotel Saturday after receiving a call of an emotionally disturbed person, one of the law enforcement sources said. 
 
 The woman was taken to the hospital with self-inflicted cuts to her wrists, the source said. 
 
 At the hospital, the source said, the woman told police that she and Spitzer had gotten into a verbal dispute that turned physical. 
 
 After the woman was taken to the hospital, the former governor showed up there, obscuring his face with a skull cap, the source said. 
 
 A senior law enforcement official briefed on the investigation said Spitzer tried to visit the woman, using the name "George" at the hospital. 
 
 The woman, whose identity has not been released by authorities, told detectives that Spitzer was her boyfriend, the law enforcement source said. Spitzer's spokeswoman said the former governor knows the woman but said she is not his girlfriend. She denied he used a fake name at the hospital. 
 
 Inside the room where the woman was staying, police removed several items as possible evidence, according to a law enforcement official. The items, including broken glass, indicated some kind of fight had occurred in the hotel room, the official added. 
 
 The woman's cell phone is now in the hands of police, who obtained a search warrant for it Sunday night, the senior law enforcement official said. They are examining the phone to determine whether there were any text messages between her and Spitzer, according to the law enforcement official. It appears some information on the phone was wiped remotely, according to the official. 
 
 Spitzer's attorney: Woman recants accusation 
 
 Adam Kaufmann, a lawyer who represents Spitzer, said in a statement that the woman is "someone whom Mr. Spitzer has known for a period of time." 
 
 "She had lived in California and was returning to her native Russia through New York. At her request, Mr. Spitzer agreed to meet her at a room previously booked for her at the Plaza Hotel," Kaufmann's statement said. "Mr. Spitzer met her in the room at midafternoon, and they had a brief and amicable conversation, and then Mr. Spitzer left." 
 
 Later Saturday, the woman asked Spitzer to return to the hotel, "at which time he saw her becoming highly emotional and was threatening self harm," Kaufmann said. 
 
 The woman has now returned to Russia, Kaufmann said, and has sent an email apologizing to the former governor for what happened Saturday. 
 
 "She has indicated that any allegations of assault were false," Kaufmann said. 
 
 A law enforcement source says investigators have received a copy of an email purportedly from the woman and are looking into it. Police say the woman has not officially recanted her account of what happened to authorities. 
 
 Law enforcement sources say police have not spoken to the woman since she left the United States. 
 
 Spitzer resigned as New York's governor in 2008 in the wake of a prostitution scandal. He lost a bid for city comptroller in 2013. In 2010 and 2011, he co-hosted a political talk show on CNN. 

 Disgraced former Gov. Eliot Spitzer is being investigated by the NYPD after allegedly assaulting a woman at the ritzy Plaza Hotel, sources said. 
 
 The department’s chief of detectives is spearheading the investigation after receiving a report of an incident involving Spitzer sometime Saturday night, the sources said Sunday. 
 
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 Sources said that after Spitzer allegedly attacked the woman at the Fifth Ave. hotel near Central Park, she tried to kill herself by slitting her wrists. 
 
 The unidentified woman knew Spitzer for about two years, a source said. Believed to be in her 20s, she is from Russia and the two may have been arguing about her returning there. She made the allegations after police responded to the hospital. Spitzer was no longer at the hotel at that point, the source said. 
 
 The woman apparently doesn’t want to press charges, but it’s up to police and prosecutors to determine whether any charges will be filed. 
 
 Cops are investigating whether former Gov. Eliot Spitzer assaulted a woman. (Adam Jeffery/CNBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Image) 
 
 “There is no truth to the allegation,” Spitzer spokeswoman Lisa Linden said Sunday night. 
 
 Reports the woman may have been choked could not be confirmed. 
 
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 “We have to find out what happened first, then (we) have to see if it warrants a charge,” a police source said. Spitzer has not been charged. 
 
 Spitzer’s political career famously imploded in 2008 after he was linked to a prostitution scandal just 14 months into his term as governor and was dubbed the “Luv Gov.” Before that, he was the state’s hard-charging attorney general, earning the more flattering “Sheriff of Wall Street” nickname. 
 
 The Plaza Hotel is seen in midtown Manhattan in New York August 19, 2015. (BRENDAN MCDERMID/REUTERS) 
 
 Spitzer, now 56, resigned after a report surfaced that he was a frequent client of the high-priced hooker ring. He first drew the attention of federal investigators when his bank reported suspicious money transfers. Investigators initially thought he may have been hiding bribe proceeds, but they later learned the money was connected to a prostitution ring. 
 
 In the wake of the revelations — and facing threats of impeachment by state lawmakers — Spitzer stepped down on March 17, 2008. 
 
 “I cannot allow for my private failings to disrupt the people’s work,” he said at the time. “Over the course of my public life, I have insisted — I believe correctly — that people take responsibility for their conduct. I can and will ask no less of myself. For this reason, I am resigning from the office of governor.” 
 
 The scandal led to months of embarrassing headlines after records showed he was referred to as Client No. 9 in an affidavit, and wore black socks during his sex sessions. One of the hookers caught on the wiretap, the then-22-year-old Ashley Dupre, was paid $4,300 in cash after a sexual encounter, according to court papers. 
 
 Spitzer was not charged. 
 
 He laid low for months before reemerging as a political commentator. Spitzer tried for a political comeback in 2013, running for city controller, but lost to Scott Stringer in the Democratic primary. Along the way, Spitzer and his wife, Silda Wall, 58, divorced. They were married 26 years and have three daughters. 
 
 In November 2014, Spitzer’s father, real estate titan and philanthropist Bernard Spitzer, died at 90. The elder Spitzer had come under fire after lending his son money to repay a $4.3 million bank loan the son used to outspend his rivals in a failed bid for state attorney general in 1994. 
 
 Spitzer, who kept his distance from the family business while he was a pol, assumed the reins of his father’s vast empire. 
 
 In December, Spitzer and his girlfriend of two years, Lis Smith, 33, broke up. Smith, a public relations associate, was a spokeswoman for then-Mayor-elect de Blasio until her relationship with the fallen governor became public. 
 
 With KENNETH LOVETT 

 Former Gov. Eliot Spitzer, the infamous “Client 9” who resigned amid a prostitution scandal, was accused of choking a woman at The Plaza hotel, law enforcement sources told The Post on Sunday. 
 
 Police rushed to the hotel after Svetlana Travis, 25, used her cellphone to call 911 at about 8 p.m. Saturday to say she was having a breakdown and had cut her wrist, the sources said. 
 
 ​The cops went up to the $1,000-a-night suite and Spitzer answered the door. 
 
 “Is there a problem?” they asked the disgraced ex-Love Guv. 
 
 “Everything’s fine. There’s no problem,” he responded, according to the sources. 
 
 The officers left, but called 911, telling an operator to phone Travis back. Travis told a dispatcher that she no longer needed help. 
 
 The cops went back anyway to check, although by then, she had left the room, the sources said. 
 
 After Spitzer opened the door a second time, the cops spied broken glass, bloodstains and clothing on the floor and started a search inside. 
 
 Travis reappeared, and the cops called EMS, which took her to Mount Sinai West Hospital, where she told staffers Spitzer had attacked her, sources said. 
 
 The former governor showed up at the hospital Sunday wearing a skullcap, sources said. 
 
 His spokeswoman, Lisa Linden, later said, “There is no truth to the allegation.” 
 
 In an interview with a second set of cops after midnight, according to a source, Travis “said that she told Spitzer she was going back to Russia, and he got upset and started throwing her around, choked her, threw her to the ground and threatened her. 
 
 “She then broke a glass, cut herself and called 911.” 
 
 Sources told CNN that Travis claimed to be Spitzer’s girlfriend. 
 
 In follow-up interviews with detectives, she gave conflicting accounts of what happened, then stopped cooperating, sources said. 
 
 ‘She told Spitzer she was going back to Russia, and he got upset and started throwing her around, choked her, threw her to the ground and threatened her.’ - source told The Post 
 
 The NYPD got a warrant to search her cellphone and the room for evidence, and cops were seen standing guard outside the room on Sunday evening. 
 
 But sources said the woman might already have left for Russia. 
 
 “She’s totally uncooperative and said that she was leaving and did not want to press any charges,” a source said. 
 
 Despite this, the NYPD has opened an investigation, which is being led by Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce. 
 
 Spitzer has yet to be charged with a crime, police said. 
 
 The corner room, No. 1541, is at the end of a long hall and is one of the hotel’s Edwardian Suites, which are nearly twice the size of a normal room and feature Louis XV-style furnishings, gold bathroom fixtures and butler service. 
 
 Spitzer and Travis were at one of the hotel bars having drinks before he used a credit card to take the suite, sources said. 
 
 During the 2008 romps that led to him being dubbed “Client 9” in court papers, Spitzer traveled to Washington, DC, for a night with call girl Ashley Dupre at The Mayflower hotel. 
 
 Details of his hooker habit also included the claim that he would wear midcalf, black dress socks during sex. It was not clear if he was wearing them Saturday. 
 
 “He was fully dressed,” a police source said. “We don’t know if he was wearing black socks.” 
 
 In her 2013 memoir, ex-prostitute Rebecca Woodward alleged that Spitzer once pinned her to a bed and choked her during a $1,500 role-playing tryst in a Murray Hill apartment. 
 
 Although Spitzer’s then-wife, Silda Wall, stoically stood by him when he resigned, she never helped the randy pol campaign during his failed comeback bid for city comptroller in 2013. 
 
 The couple announced late on Christmas Eve that year that they had split. The move came one day after The Post published exclusive photos of Spitzer going to and leaving Lis Smith’s apartment building. 
 
 Smith was a spokeswoman for then-Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio, who jettisoned her after news of the relationship broke. ​ 
 
 In December, The Post exclusively revealed that Spitzer and Smith had broken up. 
 
 Additional reporting by Frank Rosario
– More disgrace for Eliot Spitzer? The NYPD is looking into allegations that the former New York governor assaulted a woman at the Plaza Hotel on Saturday night, sources tell CNN, the New York Daily News, and the New York Post. The sources say a 25-year-old Russian woman told police that Spitzer, who has not been charged, choked her at the hotel following an argument. According to the Post's sources, the woman cut her wrists and called 911 after the fight with Spitzer, and he was the one who opened the door when officers showed up at the suite. She was taken to Mount Sinai West Hospital, where she allegedly told staffers Spitzer had attacked her. "The victim has indicated that the subject is Eliot Spitzer," the NYPD said in a statement. "Through an ongoing investigation, we are attempting to further establish the identity of the subject and the nature of the incident." CBS2 reports that the woman told investigators she did not wish to press charges against Spitzer, and a Spitzer spokeswoman says "there is no truth to the allegation." Spitzer, who was brought down by a prostitution scandal in 2008 after little more than a year as governor, is now running the real estate empire of his father, philanthropist Bernard Spitzer, who died in November 2014, the Daily News reports. (In a tell-all book, a call girl claimed Spitzer was one of her clients, and he liked a struggle.)