More Details On The "Lawyering Up" In The Cuomo Administration

Ken Lovett, Daily News journalist who has reported so much of the Moreland mess before anybody else (including the NY Times expose, much of which Lovett reported in the spring), has some interesting details on how members of the Cuomo administration are getting legal representation:

ALBANY - In an unusual move, Gov. Cuomo’s $35 million campaign account, not taxpayers, will pay for a lawyer to represent his office as the feds investigate the shutdown of his anti-corruption commission.

Prominent white-collar criminal attorney Elkan Abramowitz, a longtime Cuomo pal, has been advising Cuomo and his office since May, but his hiring was not revealed until Thursday, by the Daily News.

...

 

While the use of campaign funds to pay an office-holder’s legal fees is now routine in scandal-scarred Albany — $7.5 million has been spent on such fees since 2004 — no one could remember a campaign footing the legal bill for an entire office.

“It’s a strange use of campaign contributions, even by New York standards,” said Blair Horner, of the New York Public Interest Research Group.

Of course it's in the interest of Cuomo to pay these legal fees for his administration hacks who need representation so that they don't get overwhelmed with legal bills and turn on him.

In short, the administration that lawyers up together stays together.

Until a federal prosecutor starts turning them, that is.