Tuesday, October 20, 2015

Sealed Court Filing In Sheldon Silver Corruption Case

Sheldon Silver's trial looks like it is going to be interesting:

A sealed document was also filed in the Silver docket Monday.

It’s unclear what the document was, but Manhattan federal court Judge Valerie Caproni closed her courtroom during a hearing last week so that lawyers could argue about whether unknown sensitive evidence could be admitted at trial.

Silver’s defense attorneys didn’t respond to e-mails seeking comment on Monday evening.

The probe into Silver’s office also turned up incriminating material about former state Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos, who also now also faces corruption raps in Manhattan federal court.
The prosecutors sent a grand-jury subpoena to the Glenwood real-estate companyuin May 2014 as part of their probe into kickbacks pocketed by Silver, according to the Manhattan federal court papers filed earlier this month.

“As part of the document requests, the Silver [Glenwood] subpoena asked for all documents concerning political contributions to state officials or parties​​, and concerning the New York State Legislature,” the court papers stated.

“In addition to the materials about Dean Skelos produced by Developer-1, starting in or about May 2014, the Government began issuing grand jury subpoenas related to Dean Skelos.”

During public portions of Friday’s 2¹/₂-hour hearing, Caproni ruled against Silver and said that multiple pieces of potentially incriminating evidence could be shown to the jury at trial.

The Lower East Side assemblyman’s attorneys had tried to keep from jurors certain pieces of evidence, including his allegedly incomplete financial-disclosure forms and his attempts to halt construction of a methadone clinic in an alleged quid pro quo with a real-estate developer.

The Silver case led directly to the case against Skelos too, so whatever's in that sealed court document could be interesting and potentially incriminating.

Dunno about you, but I'm looking forward to Shelly's trial.

He's going to call all of Albany as witnesses - including Governor Cuomo - to try and argue that he didn't engage in quid pro quo corruption any more than other pols in the state capital. do and thus, it's not actually corruption.

That should be fun to watch.

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