The New York Governor gave an interview to the Associated Press specifically to rebut "callous and sleazy" rumors based on an upcoming profile that may or may not reveal (more) sexual shenanigans at the statehouse.

"For the last couple of weeks," he said of talk surrounding an impending New York Times story, "I have been the subject of what, even by Albany standards, has been a spate of outrageous rumors about me." (A spokesperson for the governor was equally defiant when we asked about the story on Sunday.)

He specifically rebutted New York Post claims that a State Trooper walked in on some naughtiness in a closet at the governors mansion and that he was nuzzling with a lady who was not his wife in a steakhouse. Paterson insisted that he'd been faithful to his wife for a decade and added, intriguingly, that he had not taken drugs since his early 20s. He also said that the sexy closet in mentioned in the Post story did not exist. To which the paper's editor Col Allan responded, reasonably, that the mansion must have closets.

Perhaps upset by this battle over storage areas, the Post take the opportunity to air a bunch more rumors in reporting the rebuttal. They mention "unsubstantiated" tale that Paterson was late arriving at the scene of the air crash in Buffalo last year because he was entangled elsewhere, and that the Times has reportedly been talking to "the jilted ex-lover of Paterson staffer and confidant David Johnson."

Paterson has also met with the New York Times editorial board, and apparently plans to meet with editors and reporters there today "in hopes of heading off a damaging story," according to the Post.