Those Skelos Wiretaps Are Going To Be Fun To Hear

Grab some popcorn and enjoy the show:

Prosecutors in the corruption case against State Senator Dean G. Skelos and his son want to play wiretaps that offer new details about how they say the son sought to leverage his father’s influence to his own benefit, according to a government court filing on Friday.

Among the wiretaps, excerpts from which were contained in the filing, is a conversation in which the senator and his son, Adam, talk about getting the son’s wife a job on a Long Island zoning board and discussing the salary and health benefits the position would bring to the couple.

“The purpose of the appointment was to make sure that Adam Skelos received additional income and health benefits, and that Adam Skelos would be able to corruptly use his wife’s position with respect to his real estate deals,” prosecutors said in their filing.

The recordings also include “colorful language” the two men used in speaking about other politicians, the defense said in a separate filing, arguing that they should not be played to the jury.

...

The prosecutors hope to present the court-ordered wiretaps to the jury to bolster their charges that the two men conspired in an extortion and fraud scheme, utilizing the senator’s office to reap hundreds of thousands of dollars for his son.

Prosecutors said in the filing that Senator Skelos “repeatedly pressured the entities from which he and Adam Skelos solicited money” around the time that “the same entities were lobbying Dean Skelos to take legislative actions in the entities’ favor, and Dean Skelos then took numerous official actions in favor of the entities that agreed to pay his son.”

In the newly disclosed wiretapped conversation in which the prosecutors contend Adam Skelos invoked his father’s office, he berates a man who represents Greek restaurants, to whom he was trying to sell energy services. “Adam Skelos made clear that buying energy services from Adam Skelos included a quid pro quo for Dean Skelos’s official power,” the government said.

Apparently enraged because the man had not met with him, Adam Skelos peppered him with expletives and eventually said, “you can lose my number, though, okay?” according to a transcript of the call.

More on the Skelos wiretap transcripts:

Adam Skelos on his cell phone number: "It's a privilege to have that number." pic.twitter.com/SP4vXUAGxa

— Susanne Craig (@susannecraig) October 23, 2015

Given what has been revealed on the wiretaps so far, you have to think that Skelos and son are going to go away for a long, long time.

These are damning transcripts - and these are just what has been revealed through the court filings.

There's more there - enough that the Skelos lawyers are trying to keep them from the jury.

This is going to be a fun, fun trial.

On a side note, Attorney General Schneiderman said yesterday there are more corruption probes that have yet to be publicly revealed.

Add that news to the ongoing Buffalo Billion Project investigation by Bharara (which gets some discussion in Buffalo at an Investigative Post event on Monday 10/26) and the coming Silver and Skelos trials in November and we're going to have a full slate of corruption news for some time to come.