Wide Ranging Subpoena Served On Cuomo's Office

Fred Dicker in the NY Post on just what Preet Bhrara was looking for when he hit Governor's Cuomo's office with a subpoena for information related to the Buffalo Billion investigation:

The Post, meanwhile, learned that Bharara’s subpoena was far more sweeping in its demands for information from Cuomo’s office then had previously been known.

The subpoena, excerpts of which were obtained by The Post, sought “phone logs, visitor logs, calendar entries between January 2012 and present that show meetings with any’’ entities on a list of 26 individuals and companies.

The subpoena also demanded information on “any actions taken by” Percoco, Secretary to the Governor William Mulrow, state Operations Director James Malatras, Buffalo-area Democratic operative Peter Cutler and other Cuomo aides related to the companies for which Percoco and Howe worked, as well as for several other companies connected to the governor’s high-profile “Buffalo Billion’’ economic-development efforts.

It also seeks “any documents concerning’’ two not-for-profit economic-development companies set up in conjunction with SUNY Polytechnic Institute’s Colleges of Nanoscale Science and Engineering and its president, Dr. Alain Kaloyeros, a key “Buffalo Billion’’ adviser.

Talk about wide-ranging, holy cow!

Four years of information, phone logs, visitor logs, calendar entries, etc between January 2012 and the present involving 26 individuals and companies - including the governor's secretary, Bill Mulrow, his state operations director Jim Malatras and other aides.

Note too, how Bharara is looking for information related to "Buffalo-area Democratic Operative Peter Cutler."

Whatever Bharara is looking at, it ranges from Buffalo to Albany.

Speaking of searches, the Post also reports this:

The FBI raided the homes of two men close to Gov. Cuomo as part of the widening federal probe into Albany corruption, The Post has learned.

Agents carted off evidence from the Westchester home of former top Cuomo aide Joseph Percoco and the Washington, DC-area home of lobbyist Todd Howe, who was fired last week after Cuomo’s office barred state officials from any contact with him, sources said.

A Manhattan federal judge approved search warrants for at least three locations, and the raids were carried out two weeks ago, a law-enforcement source said.

The feds were able to secure the warrant for Howe’s out-of-state home by arguing that he conducted business within the Southern District of New York, which covers Manhattan, The Bronx and the northern suburbs, the source said.

The governor's line of defense now is that Percoco was telling potential clients he had the administration's approval for representing outside private clients that had business before the state (even though he didn't) and that, in any case, once he left the state payroll and went to work for Cuomo's re-election campaign, he never intended to return to government work.

That line of defense showed up in a Ken Lovett piece at the Daily News as well as the Fred Dicker piece linked above.

We'll see what Bharara finds related to that - or what he can squeeze out of people.

Like the organized crime figure he is, Cuomo uses untraceable communications so that he doesn't leave much of a trail for investigators.

But that doesn't mean others around him were always compliant.

And this is just the stuff we know Bharara is looking for - there's also the contract stuff related to the Buffalo Billion Project that he's looking at, as well as Cuomo's donors.

Dicker writes Cuomo's freaked out by the investigation:

Sources in the Cuomo administration said the governor appears “increasingly nervous and anxious’’ about Bharara’s probe, and some noted that Cuomo has almost completely disappeared from public view during the past weeks as the scandal began to unfold

He ought to be anxious and nervous about all of this.

This is such a wide-ranging investigation and Cuomo has run an administration that has been ethically-challenged from the beginning, so the more Bharara looks into things, the more likely it is that he finds something that reaches very, very close to Cuomo - and maybe even reaches Cuomo himself.