Marissa Shorenstein

Gov. Paterson's administration has already lost a communications director, two state police chiefs and a criminal justice commissioner, but today another official resigned. NY1 says Press Secretary Marissa Shorenstein, whom the governor allegedly asked to contact Sherr-Una Booker, the then-girlfriend of a top aide, has released her final statement. “Due to the circumstances that have led to my unwitting involvement in recent news stories, I can no longer do my job effectively," Shorenstein wrote, adding that, "Throughout my career I have performed my duties professionally and with integrity, basing my actions on what I believed to be true at the time."

Just before the press secretary made her announcement, Paterson for the first time refuted charges he tried to persuade Booker to drop her case against former aide David Johnson, reports the AP. "I would never, nor did I ever, try to persuade anyone not to take the natural course of the law," he said on Don Imus' Fox Business show.