John Flanagan Rakes In $150K In Outside Income Despite Claims To The Contrary

Go get him, Preet:

ALBANY — Senate Majority Leader John Flanagan earned up to $150,000 last year from a Long Island law firm despite claims that he was giving up his outside legal work, according to documents made public Tuesday.

Flanagan's 2015 financial disclosure statement showed that he earned between $100,000 and $150,000 from Forchelli, Curto, Deegan, Schwartz, Mineo & Terrana in Uniondale — the same amount he reported earning in 2014.

After he became majority leader in May of 2015, Flanagan (R-Suffolk County) told reporters that he’d stopped working for the firm to fully concentrate on his legislative job.

Flanagan spokesman Scott Reif insisted that Flanagan has not done any “active legal work” since becoming majority leader.

Must be nice to do "no active work" and still make an extra $150K a year.

According to the DN, Flanagan's disclosure claimed:

that he did not provide “direct services” to clients in 2015. Instead he provided “indirect services to the law firm in the areas of corporate trusts, tax certiorari, wills and estate, land use and planning.”

I bet if somebody with subpoena power were so inclined, he/she could look to see just how much "indirect service" Flanagan provided for the $150K.

Cuomo Ally To Be Arrested For Bribery

Wheee!!!!!

A New York State Supreme Court judge pleaded guilty on Wednesday to bribery in connection with the state attorney general’s investigation into his relationship with a Buffalo-area political consultant with ties to Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

The judge, John A. Michalek, who also pleaded guilty to offering a false instrument for filing, said he would cooperate with the probe.

...

 A spokesman for the state courts system said that as part of his plea agreement, Mr. Michalek had resigned as a state Supreme Court judge.

Mr. Michalek has been under investigation for months by Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s office in connection with his relationship with Steven Pigeon, a former Erie County Democratic chairman who has raised money and occasionally advised the governor on western New York-related matters.

According to the criminal complaint filed Wednesday, Messrs. Michalek and Pigeon had “an understanding” in which the judge “engaged in official conduct” that benefited Mr. Pigeon’s interests, which included lawsuits before the judge. Mr. Michalek received benefits from Mr. Pigeon, such as hockey tickets and assistance seeking judicial appointments for himself and jobs for his relatives.

Mr. Pigeon is set to be arrested on Thursday and indicted later that day, according to a person familiar with the matter. Mr. Pigeon’s attorney, Paul Cambria Jr., didn’t respond to a request for comment.

“Today’s proceedings expose a corrupt, multiyear scheme to use political favors to buy off a sitting state judge,” Mr. Schneiderman, a Democrat, said in a statement Wednesday.

Here are some previous Perdido Street School blog posts on Pigeon and Cuomo (here, here, here and here.)

And of course, there's the wonderful Buffalo News story in 2013 in which Pigeon brags he's Governor Cuomo's go-to guy in Buffalo:

If Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo seems obsessed with all things Buffalo in the months leading to his re-election campaign, those familiar with the governor point to his rejection by the voters of nine western counties in 2010.

Perhaps that’s why Cuomo is turning to G. Steven Pigeon, one of his oldest – and most controversial – Western New York allies, for fundraising, politics and even policy, according to several sources.

The former Erie County Democratic chairman is taking on more assignments from Cuomo and is telling political leaders here of a larger role, according to at least half a dozen highly placed sources with knowledge of the situation.

And while Cuomo spokesman Richard Azzopardi would not discuss Pigeon specifically when questioned by The Buffalo News, he did not deny the suggestion that Pigeon plays a role for the governor.

“The governor has many friends in Buffalo, from the mayor to the county executive to Sam Hoyt to Steve Pigeon,” Azzoparadi said.

Pigeon’s larger profile may also stem from other roles such as major campaign donor and the $50,000 check he presented to Cuomo’s birthday fundraiser at Manhattan’s Waldorf-Astoria Hotel last December.

Other Democrats say a senior official for the governor has told members of the Cuomo administration, including Hoyt, to have regular contact with Pigeon. They say that Pigeon has joined conference calls and meetings and that his involvement transcends politics to include economic-development matters.

One major Democrat said local officials “employed by the State of New York” are aware of Pigeon’s enhanced position for the governor.

“He’s going to be his top political person,” the Democrat said of Pigeon’s role for the governor in Western New York. “Steve is telling people that."

Now that Pigeon, the governor's top political person in Buffalo, is set to be arrested on bribery charges tomorrow, the governor may be wondering just what that top operative has to trade with the authorities for a lighter sentence.

Pigeon was in on Cuomo's economic development matters in Buffalo?

Gee, there might be something there, especially since those matters are already under investigation by US Attorney Preet Bharara.

This Pigeon arrest is just one strand of the investigations into the governor's world that Cuomo's got to worry about.

There are also the various strands in the Buffalo Billion and state contract mess, with offshoots to former aides Todd Howe and Joe Percoco and Cuomo's man at SUNY Poly, Alain Kaloyeros.

Bharara has warned that he's scrutinizing malfeasance in executive branches around New York.

Going to be an interesting, interesting summer.

De Blasio Defends Mayoral Control Despite Scandals

De Blasio was up in Albany today testifying in favor of extension of mayoral control.

State of Politics reports that the testimony was a fairly staid affair - except for this exchange:

The only actual fireworks came when de Blasio was challenged by Republican Sen. Terrence Murphy, who has been a staunch critic of the mayor and is a freshman lawmaker from a suburban Senate district that includes Putnam and Westchester counties.

“Convince me,” Murphy said, “with all the allegations going on in your office why I should vote for mayoral control.”

De Blasio responded by pointing to successes under the mayoral control program, including higher graduation rates and test scores as well as an expansion of computer science courses.

“These are major changes in the way we approach education,” de Blasio said. “It’s only possible under a mayoral control system.”

Murphy, however, wasn’t necessarily convinced.

“There’s one thing you forgot and that’s the trust factor,” Murphy said. “You have to have the trust of the people.”

The mayor shot back: “The public trusts the actual positive changes in their lives.”

And he added the allegations that have been raised shouldn’t count against the mayoral control policy itself or his administration.

“In our democracy, we don’t judge by allegations,” he said, “we judge by facts.”

Murphy’s political allies had initially complained over the Democratic fundraising tactics in 2014, when donors at de Blasio’s urging gave heavily to county party committees, which in turn supported candidates running in key battleground races.

Murphy succeeded in the Senate Republican Greg Ball, a maverick GOP lawmaker and conservative firebrand who moved to Texas rather than seek re-election.

De Blasio’s political team had backed Democrat Justin Wagner to replace Ball, one of a half-dozen competitive races that year. 

Heavy money is on mayoral control being extended for a year, then we do it all over again next year (assuming de Blasio isn't indicted or heading to prison by then.)

De Blasio wants a multi-year extension (knowing he cannot get a permanent extension like he tried for last year) but state Senate Republicans and Cuomo want to humiliate him as much as possible, so it's a heavy left to get more than a single year.

But we'll see - Heastie is backing the mayor and as always in Albany, you never know what gets horsetraded.

Cuomo Says He Won't Give Back Bribes, Er, Donations He Took From Crooked Glenwood Management

Cuomo digs in on the Glenwood money:

Gov. Cuomo said Monday voters will just have to trust him to do the right thing when asked why he won’t return more than $1 million from a real-estate firm involved in two of Albany’s biggest corruption scandals.

“Yes, I received significant funds, donations from that company. And I was their opponent as a matter of policy,” Cuomo said during a WNYC radio interview. “I was advocating for rent reforms.”

He shrugged off the $1.2 million that flowed into his campaign account from Glenwood Management and its employees as irrelevant to his decision-making.

“If I believed that I could be influenced by a million dollars or a thousand dollars or 50 dollars, then I’m in the wrong place and I should resign immediately,” he said.

“If you can be influenced by the money, then forget the denomination. You just have the wrong person in the office.”

Cuomo claims he doesn't know why Glenwood gave all that money to him or to others in Albany:

Cuomo claimed he had no idea why Glenwood would donate $14 million to elected officials and party committees over the past decade, if not to push its agenda.

“Why do people donate? A lot of reasons. They think he’s their best candidate, they don’t like the other candidate. They like the smile. Who knows?” he said.

“You have to do your job and exercise your judgment . . . absent who supports you, who doesn’t support you. If you can’t do that you can’t be in that position in the first place.”

He has no idea why Glenwood donated all that dough?

He should read the NY Times piece by William Rashbaum from Saturday:

The contributions seemed to pay dividends for Glenwood and the real estate industry as a whole in the form of a seat at the table — sometimes quite literally.

With a law that governed rent regulations set to expire in 2011, Mr. Dorego testified that he and other real estate executives were called to two meetings with state leaders in June, one at the governor’s office in New York City and one at his office in Albany.

At the meeting in Albany, Mr. Dorego testified, he and other executives met first with Mr. Cuomo in the governor’s office. And then they were summoned by Mr. Skelos, who sought to reassure them. Everything, Mr. Skelos said, “seemed to be falling in line.”

And:

Mr. Dorego told the jury the company reaped an estimated $50 million to $100 million in savings over an unspecified period from one state program alone, a real estate tax-abatement law called 421-a. The State Legislature must renew the law periodically through a process essentially controlled by the two legislative leaders and the governor.

Mr. Dorego testified that the law’s continued renewal was an “absolute necessity” for Glenwood. Without it, he said, the cost of city real estate taxes — the largest component of a luxury high-rise’s operating budget — would make building such towers unfeasible, in part because lenders would not finance them.

For that reason, Mr. Dorego told the jury, keeping the State Senate in the control of Republicans — who, in his words, “were more business-oriented and had more of an interest in making sure business thrived in the city” — was “the No. 1 priority” for Glenwood’s political strategy and “Mr. Litwin’s No. 1 concern.”

Glenwood also benefited from another state-administered program, using it to obtain more than $1 billion in low-interest, tax-exempt bond financing since 2000, to buy land and construct eight buildings it has put up since 2001, according to testimony at Mr. Silver’s trial. Each application to the program, under which a developer must set aside 20 percent of a new building’s units for low-income housing, must be approved by an obscure state agency, the Public Authorities Control Board.

The three-member board is made up of the governor and the two legislative leaders, or their designees. All applications require unanimous approval, giving each member a potential veto as well as, prosecutors suggested, power and leverage.

Glenwood also depended on the governor and the legislative leaders to renew favorable rent regulations that determine when a developer or landlord can shift rent-stabilized apartments to market-rate rentals.

The governor also makes it sound like he didn't ask for all that Glenwood money - again, he ought to read the Rashbaum NY Times piece so that he can understand that information is already out there publicly:

The biggest beneficiary of Glenwood’s giving: Mr. Cuomo, who, in the last election cycle, received more than $1 million from limited liability companies, or LLCs, connected to the company. 

More:

When it came to the governor, Glenwood was considered such a reliable contributor that his fund-raisers suggested to the developer that it spread what would become a multiyear million-dollar donation “into biannual installments,” according to documents uncovered by investigators from the Moreland Commission, an anticorruption panel that Mr. Cuomo created in 2013, but abruptly disbanded nine months later.

Glenwood also funneled money to Mr. Cuomo indirectly: On a single day in 2011, 10 of the company’s LLCs combined to give a total of $500,000 to the Committee to Save New York, a group of business interests that spent $16 million to support Mr. Cuomo’s agenda during his first two years in office.

Cuomo obviously thinks his excuses will work with voters - many of whom aren't paying that close attention to this anyway - and perhaps he's right about that.

But these excuses aren't working well with at least one editorial board which keeps drubbing him day after day - and that's the NY Post.

Here's their latest editorial:

Gov. Cuomo’s excuses for keeping money from a tainted firm prove one of two things: He’s not interested in cleaning up Albany’s reputation for sleaze — or he’s completely tone-deaf.

Asked Monday if he’d take The Post’s advice and return $1.2 million in donations from Glenwood Management, the real-estate firm implicated in the Sheldon Silver and Dean Skelos trials, Cuomo declined.

ADVERTISING

Why?

“If I believed that I could be influenced by a million dollars or a thousand dollars or fifty dollars, then I’m in the wrong place, and I should resign immediately,” he said.

Well, Silver and Skelos claimed they weren’t influenced by Glenwood money, either. But in Cuomo’s case, no one’s even accusing him of that; the question is whether it’s right to keep money from a tainted firm.

Doing so signals a tolerance for corruption — and sends an unhelpful message to Albany’s entire political class.

Officials from Glenwood were said to have conspired with Skelos and Silver in their corrupt schemes, even if they themselves were never indicted. So how can the state’s top pol justify keeping their cash, especially if he hopes to rid the capital of sleaze and restore public trust?

Remember, the gov has more than $12 million in cash on hand. So returning Glenwood’s donations will hardly cripple him.

Nor, by the way, is the issue legislative “reforms,” as Cuomo suggests. One idea has been a ban on lawmakers’ outside income; a city panel Monday backed such a ban for local pols in exchange for higher pay.

But schemers always find ways to skirt reforms. What’s needed are pols who are beyond reproach — and prove it by their deeds. Cuomo so far has little interest in that. So how can he expect anyone to think he’s cleaning up Albany?

Now maybe editorials don't mean much in the grand scheme of things, but news coverage does (just ask de Blasio what he thinks the Post coverage, in part, did to his poll numbers), so if they keep at this they can do some damage to him.

But the real danger is that the guy who took Silver and Skelos down - US Attorney Preet Bharara - is watching this and thinking "OK, I got convictions on two  of the three crooks in a room who ran Albany but now the third one remains as intransigent as ever in his corruption."

Why Cuomo refuses to return the money is beyond me.

He can raise more, it would show a good faith effort toward cleaning up the corrupt culture in Albany and would provide leadership at a time when Albany politics needs it.

Instead he's digging in his heels and saying a) he's not going to give the money back and b) he has no idea why he was Donor # 1 for Glenwood, the firm at the center of the Silver and Skelos corruption cases, but it surely wasn't for any corrupt reasons.

Preetmas can't come soon enough.

Newspapers Aren't Fooled By Cuomo Anymore

Nice to see the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle isn't fooled by Governor Cuomo on ethics issues:

In the late hours of Friday, Dec. 11 — the very day Skelos was found guilty of corruption — the governor took a pen in hand and vetoed two bills that would have increased government transparency. Reporters had gone home from the capitol and the slow weekend news cycle had begun.

The next day, the governor issued a strange executive order, putting his own, weaker reform into place while claiming to "lead by example in advancing transparency and efficiency in government." He also promised to encourage state legislators to embrace more comprehensive reforms, a pledge he has made before, with little to show for it.

Then Cuomo embarked on a celebratory tour, burying news of his actions beneath a dog and pony show about the $500 million Upstate Revitalization Initiative awards. On Monday, he was in Rochester, where he was christened "the savior of Upstate" by University of Rochester president Joel Seligman. The governor talked tough with reporters, promising to hold recipients of the economic development money accountable, and touting the extreme importance of transparency.

Anyone who believes in a healthy democracy should flabbergasted by all of this.

The two bills struck down by the governor were designed to strengthen New York's Freedom of Information law, or FOIL. These were measures introduced at the request of the state's Committee on Open Government; five of its 11 members are appointed by Cuomo. Virtually every public interest group in New York backed the legislation. Yet, in justifying his vetoes, Cuomo called the language in the bills "radical," "myopic" and "seriously flawed."

Reinventing Albany, a New York City-based good government organization, quickly issued a comparison between the alternative reform put forth in Cuomo's executive order and the two vetoed bills. It shows the bills would have had considerably more impact.

The fact that the FOIL vetoes, and the lame executive order, came in the wake of two of our state's biggest political scandals shows a shameful and extraordinary lack of commitment to increasing government transparency and accountability. But it is hardly an isolated incident.

Cuomo has failed to deliver on his promises to close the LLC loophole, a major flaw in campaign finance laws, while he has continued to benefit from millions of dollars in LLC contributions. He abruptly shut down the independent ethics commission he created, after it started looking in uncomfortable places. His 90-day automatic deletion policy for all state emails was discontinued after receiving intense criticism from state lawmakers and legal experts. His handling of the "Buffalo Billion" has raised serious questions. An ethics package he hailed as "dramatic reform" earlier this year has been scoffed at by good government groups.

Cuomo has repeatedly said he places a high priority on cleaning up Albany, but his deeds say otherwise.

Poughkeepsie Journal not fooled either:

Gov. Andrew Cuomo was dead wrong to veto bills that would have helped those seeking public documents and his flimsy replacement should hardly settle the matter.

The governor waited  until virtually the last minute before axing two measures — one would have greatly narrowed the time for government to decide whether to appeal a Freedom of Information ruling, the other would have provided attorney’s fees to members of the public who win such court fights.

The governor alleged the bills were “flawed.” Actually, his reasoning is flawed.

For starters, if the governor truly had problems with the language in the bills, there was plenty of time to work through these issues during the legislative session. These good-government initiatives, in fact, have been around in various forms for years. If the governor had the political will to see them become law, they would have become law by now.

For another, the governor’s replacement, an executive order, directs all state agencies to adhere “to the spirit” of what was sought under the bill to stop needless delays in FOIL appeals. That’s not good enough, not even close.

The governor took exception to the notion that state agencies would have to comply with a tighter appeal deadline, but the legislature wouldn’t necessarily have to adhere to such a standard. While it’s true the legislature has been able to skirt too many FOIL requirements, the governor and the agencies he controls should be leading by example and working to bring the legislature along.

What’s more, as good-government experts have pointed out, the vast majority of FOIL requests are directed at state and local governments, as well as school districts. Narrowing the timeframe for government bodies to appeal decisions is imperative; as is, these appeals can drag out for months, sometimes rendering the information useless when it is finally released. The vetoed legislation would have forced government agencies to file a notice of appeal within two months, not the ridiculously long nine-month window that some have taken.

In addition to his executive order, the governor promises more FOIL-related reforms will be put forward in the new year. The public will be watching. The state is dealing with the fallout from various political scandals that have landed some of its top political leaders behind bars. Transparency is essential to an accountable, open government.

The governor should be leading the charge, not pulling bait and switches that leave public-document laws much weaker than proposed.

The governor's b.s. used to fool people, including the editorial boards, into thinking that he was serious about cleaning up Albany and making government more transparent.

Few are fooled these days.

NY Times Details Glenwood Management's Largesse And Access To Governor Cuomo

A fascinating piece in the NY Times this morning that you should read in total.  

In it we learn Glenwood Management owner Leonard Litwin - Governor Cuomo's largest and most generous campaign donor - was an unindicted co-conspirator in the trial of Dean Skelos and his son, Adam.

We also learn that Glenwood had expectations about all that money they gave (which they saw as the "cost of doing business") and boy did those donations ever pay dividends.

Here's the opening of the piece (by William Rashbaum):

The recent federal trials that ended in the quick convictions of Sheldon Silver and Dean G. Skelos laid bare a world of greed, flagrant corruption and abuse of power in Albany, with evidence showing payoffs taking a deceptively circular route from business interests to the elected officials whose help they sought.

But one man who was a key player in both cases — and identified by the government as a co-conspirator at the trial of Mr. Skelos, the former Republican majority leader of the State Senate, and his son, Adam — never appeared in the courtroom.

That man was Leonard Litwin, the 101-year-old owner of Glenwood Management, an influential developer of luxury high-rise apartment buildings in Manhattan that is among the state’s most prodigious political donors. Prosecutors named Mr. Litwin as a co-conspirator during a sidebar conference with the judge and defense lawyers that went largely unnoticed.

In addition to its role at the heart of the government’s case against the Skeloses, both of whom were convicted of bribery, extortion and conspiracy this month, Glenwood also figured prominently in the federal corruption trial of Sheldon Silver, the Democratic assemblyman and former speaker who was convicted of extortion, wire fraud and money laundering 11 days earlier.

The name of Mr. Litwin was just one example of the way the two corruption trials revealed how entwined the interests of Glenwood and other developers are with the business of the state. 

Testimony, documents, emails and other evidence provided the most detailed look to date at the ways in which Glenwood and others deftly worked the levers of power to marshal tens of millions of dollars in campaign contributions through a maze of limited-liability companies, trade associations and political groups, with Senator Skelos himself soliciting and directing the money at times.

Prosecutors had a 54 page printout of Glenwood donations to Albany political players over the last 10 years through 26 different entities.

Number #1 on the list of recipients?

The biggest beneficiary of Glenwood’s giving: Mr. Cuomo, who, in the last election cycle, received more than $1 million from limited liability companies, or LLCs, connected to the company.

More:

When it came to the governor, Glenwood was considered such a reliable contributor that his fund-raisers suggested to the developer that it spread what would become a multiyear million-dollar donation “into biannual installments,” according to documents uncovered by investigators from the Moreland Commission, an anticorruption panel that Mr. Cuomo created in 2013, but abruptly disbanded nine months later.

Glenwood also funneled money to Mr. Cuomo indirectly: On a single day in 2011, 10 of the company’s LLCs combined to give a total of $500,000 to the Committee to Save New York, a group of business interests that spent $16 million to support Mr. Cuomo’s agenda during his first two years in office.

And what did Glenwood get in return from the governor for all that cash?

Plenty:

The contributions seemed to pay dividends for Glenwood and the real estate industry as a whole in the form of a seat at the table — sometimes quite literally.

With a law that governed rent regulations set to expire in 2011, Mr. Dorego testified that he and other real estate executives were called to two meetings with state leaders in June, one at the governor’s office in New York City and one at his office in Albany.

At the meeting in Albany, Mr. Dorego testified, he and other executives met first with Mr. Cuomo in the governor’s office. And then they were summoned by Mr. Skelos, who sought to reassure them. Everything, Mr. Skelos said, “seemed to be falling in line.”

Glenwood bagman Charlie Dorego explained more of the benefits Glenwood reaped from the politicos they donated to - especially the "three men in a room," Silver, Skelos and Cuomo:

Mr. Dorego told the jury the company reaped an estimated $50 million to $100 million in savings over an unspecified period from one state program alone, a real estate tax-abatement law called 421-a. The State Legislature must renew the law periodically through a process essentially controlled by the two legislative leaders and the governor.

Mr. Dorego testified that the law’s continued renewal was an “absolute necessity” for Glenwood. Without it, he said, the cost of city real estate taxes — the largest component of a luxury high-rise’s operating budget — would make building such towers unfeasible, in part because lenders would not finance them.

For that reason, Mr. Dorego told the jury, keeping the State Senate in the control of Republicans — who, in his words, “were more business-oriented and had more of an interest in making sure business thrived in the city” — was “the No. 1 priority” for Glenwood’s political strategy and “Mr. Litwin’s No. 1 concern.”

Glenwood also benefited from another state-administered program, using it to obtain more than $1 billion in low-interest, tax-exempt bond financing since 2000, to buy land and construct eight buildings it has put up since 2001, according to testimony at Mr. Silver’s trial. Each application to the program, under which a developer must set aside 20 percent of a new building’s units for low-income housing, must be approved by an obscure state agency, the Public Authorities Control Board.

The three-member board is made up of the governor and the two legislative leaders, or their designees. All applications require unanimous approval, giving each member a potential veto as well as, prosecutors suggested, power and leverage.

Glenwood also depended on the governor and the legislative leaders to renew favorable rent regulations that determine when a developer or landlord can shift rent-stabilized apartments to market-rate rentals.

Okay, let's recap:

Governor Cuomo's largest donor, Leonard Litwin, was an unindicted co-conspirator in the Skelos case.

Litwin's firm, Glenwood, reaped at least $50 million in tax savings from one state program (421a tax abatement) and maybe as much as $100 million, got $1 billion in low interest, tax-exempt bond financing to build 8 towers since 2001 that had to be approved by a board made up of three men - either the heads of the two legislative houses and the governor or their "designees," - and lots of other help in renewing "favorable rent regulations" for shifting rent-stabilized apartments to market-rate rentals.

In return for all that help and largesse they gave $10 million in campaign contributions since 2005, with over $1 million going to Governor Cuomo just last election cycle.

Governor Cuomo's allies at the shadowy Committee To Save NY PAC that spent millions touting his "pro-business" agenda early in his first term also enjoyed Glenwood largesse, receiving half a million in contributions through ten different entities one day in 2011.

Let's consider the five men tied most closely to all of this:

One was Shelly Silver, convicted on seven corruption counts.

Another was Dean Skelos, convicted on eight corruption counts.

A third was Glenwood bagman Charlies Dorego, who received a non-prosecution agreement for working with prosecutors against Silver and Skelos.

A fourth was Leonard Litwin, an unindicted co-conspirator in the Skelos case.

And the fifth was Governor Andrew M. Cuomo, so far unindicted but seemingly not uninvestigated.

Where did this Times story come from?

It's got the feel of someone beginning to lay the public groundwork for an eventual takedown of Cuomo.

If Preet's "Stay Tuned..." tweet during Governor Cuomo's Buffalo Billion Mach II presser was the First Day of Preetmas (signaling there is more to come - especially around Cuomo's other economic development program, the Buffalo Billion Project, which is under investigation by federal prosecutors for what looks to be bids rigged for Cuomo donors), this interesting little story here has the feel of the Second Day of Preetmas, detailing as it does Glenwood's generosity and largesse in return for political benefits.

There's an awful lot of Litwin money that ended up in Cuomo's coffers, either directly or to Cuomo allies like CSNY (or other allies, which Bill Mahoney of Politico NY reported on back in August).

Glenwood got an awful lot of access for all that dough and certainly the governor looked to hide that access, "forgetting" that he had meetings with real estate executives, including Glenwood execs, in his offices in both NYC and Albany in 2011 when rent regulations were set to expire.

2011 was the year his Committee To Save NY friends got $500,000 in one day through 10 different LLC's to help tout Cuomo's message, btw.

The smoke swirling around Cuomo and his campaign donors is starting to get awfully heavy, isn't it?

And this is just the Glenwood stuff.

Don't forget, there's more - the feds subpoenaed Cuomo donors and state entities connected to his Buffalo Billion Project for funkiness around the bidding process (and donations that ended up in Cuomo's coffers right around the same time as the bidding process was going on.)

If Preet Bharara was able to take down Shelly Silver for quid pro quo corruption without ever proving an explicit quid pro quo agreement, it's not out of the realm of possibility that he's going to look to take down Governor Andrew M Cuomo for quid pro quo agreements around campaign donations and political benefits reaped by donors in return without anyone ever expressly admitting to an explicit quid pro quo.

Again, whether this all ends with criminal charges against Cuomo, well, that's hard to say.

But these stories about Cuomo and his donors (i.e., the Glenwood/Cuomo connection and the Buffalo Billion/Cuomo connection) aren't coming out of the ether.

Preet leaks as a way to set the stage for eventual criminal charges. 

He did it with Silver (leaking news of a federal investigation into the speaker one month before the criminal charges were filed in January), and he did it with Skelos (leaking first in January, then again in May right before the criminal charges were levied against Skelos.)

Just something to think about when you see these stories about Cuomo and his donors.

About That Buffalo Chronicle Story Reporting A Cuomo Indictment In January (UPDATED - 12/6 - 12:10 PM)

I see much talk on the Internet about this Buffalo Chronicle piece that reports US Attorney Preet Bharara "intends to indict Governor Andrew Cuomo on January 2nd — along with a half dozen associates and former staffers — on public corruption, racketeering, conspiracy, and honest services fraud."

Before you break out the champagne and start buying those 1 cent copies of Cuomo's memoir All Things Possible at Amazon, let me offer a word of caution about anything coming from the Buffalo Chronicle.

Matthew Ricchiazzi, who runs the political blog The Buffalo Chronicle, is a 29 year old politician wanna-be who tried to run for mayor of Buffalo in 2009 before the Board of Elections rejected his petition to get on the ballot.

As a journalist, his track record is as problematic as his political career - Ricchiazzi been accused of misquoting people and "reckless reporting" in the past.

In this piece, his sourcing is thinner than Donald Trump's skin ("sources say" and some unnamed "longtime Albany insider"), which doesn't exactly inspire me with confidence in the reporting.

Our friend in Buffalo, Sean Crowley, had this to say about Ricchiazzi and the Buffalo Chronicle back in July when Ricchiazzi first posted that a Cuomo indictment was coming:

As soon as you see Ricchiazzi's name anywhere on or near the article you can safely bet it's inaccurate at best. I was told last week that Buffalo Chronicle is owned and/or funded by Carl Paldadino which I am not even sure to be fact but it would add to the lack of credibility anything this guy says.

Ricchiazzi posted something similar in October about Cuomo indictment, which I posted about here.

I think there are plenty of reasons to keep a close watch on where Preet Bharara goes next now that he's got Shelly Silver convicted on all seven corruption counts and Dean Skelos' conviction is all but a done deal, given the wiretaps and evidence.

I wrote about that this morning, so I won't rehash it except to say that the Buffalo Billion investigation is the thing to keep an eye on.

Here are some links on the Buffalo Billion case (here, here, here, here and here.)

There certainly is a lot of smoke around Cuomo's Buffalo Billion Project, his campaign donors (one of whom was at the center of both the Silver and Skelos corruption cases) and the Moreland Commission shutdown itself.

While I think it's fun to try and read the smoke rings from all that smoke surrounding the Buffalo Billion Project and Cuomo's donors, I wouldn't trust anything coming from the Buffalo Chronicle or Matthew Ricchiazzi and I wouldn't bet the mortgage on Preet Bharara indicting Andrew Cuomo and six associates on public corruption, racketeering, conspiracy, and honest services fraud on January 2.

UPDATED - 12/6 - 12:10 PM: Sean Crowley posted the following at his blog regarding the comment he made on a previous Perdido Street School blog post that I embedded in the above post:

Since Carl Paladino became a Board of Ed member in Buffalo I've mentioned him on this blog probably dozens of times. Funny though nothing I've ever said about his antics as a board member has ever caused him to even acknowledge I exist. And I've said quite a bit  -- very little of it flattering to a guy who is used to flattery from his legions of fawning admirers. But in debunking a Buffalo Chronicle post a few weeks back in a comment on Perdido St. I mentioned that someone had told me Paladino pays Buffalo Chronicle's expenses. I also mentioned that I wasn't even sure it was true but it had me thinking so I repeated it in the comment. Mea culpa.  And when BC came out with its latest whopper about Cuomo being indicted bY Preet Baharra on Saturday January 2, the author of Perdido St. reposted my last remark about the low credibility of Buffalo Chronicle to cool the fever of anyone popping champagne and street dancing over the "news."

Next thing you know, this showed up:

As Sean noted in his piece, it's interesting that after all the stuff written about Carl Paladino on the education blogs, it's the linking of Paladino to Ricchiazzi that's the thing that gets a response out of him.

In any case, the fault is mine - I shouldn't have embedded the comment into the post.

I was attempting to tamp down the excitement that was going around the Internet and social media about the Chronicle's "report" of an impending Cuomo indictment on January 2 and threw Sean's tweet in as further evidence that the Chronicle isn't exactly the best source for news.

In doing so, I did something quite similar to the Buffalo Chronicle writer of the Cuomo indictment piece and became a source of hearsay.

I hereby update the post to set the record straight and note that Carl Paladino says he has nothing to do with Matthew Ricchiazzi or the Buffalo Chronicle.

I still maintain the Chronicle is not exactly the best source for news.

Turns out, on the "Chronicle" story, neither was Perdido Street School blog.

Mea culpa - it won't happen again.

The Silver Conviction On All Seven Corruption Counts Should Give Cuomo Pause

From Weiser and Craig at the NY Times:

Sheldon Silver, an assemblyman who rose from the Lower East Side of Manhattan to become one of New York State’s most powerful politicians, was found guilty on Monday of federal corruption charges, ending a trial that was the capstone of the government’s efforts to expose the seamy culture of influence-peddling in Albany.

After a five-week trial in Federal District Court in Manhattan, the end came rather quickly and unceremoniously for Mr. Silver, 71, a Democrat who served more than two decades as Assembly speaker before he was forced to resign from the post after his arrest in January.

Mr. Silver, who must automatically forfeit the legislative seat to which he was first elected nearly 40 years ago, was convicted on all seven counts of honest services fraud, extortion and money laundering filed against him.

When word came that the jury had reached a verdict, Mr. Silver fidgeted in his chair, clenched his jaw, shook his head, sighed and cast furtive glances toward Preet Bharara, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, who had taken a seat at the rear of the courtroom just before the verdict was read.

After the fourth guilty pronouncement by the jury forewoman, Mr. Silver’s shoulders sagged visibly inside his baggy navy blue suit.

 Mr. Bharara released a succinct statement after the verdict: “Today, Sheldon Silver got justice, and at long last, so did the people of New York.”

No, the people of New York haven't gotten justice yet.

Former state Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos is still on trial for corruption, though with the wiretaps and boatloads of evidence against him and his son, I would think convictions in the Skelos trial are a done deal.

That leaves only the third man in the room, Sheriff Andy Cuomo, not yet under indictment and/or convicted.

US Attorney Preet Bharara is looking into Cuomo on a couple of counts:

First for the Moreland shutdown in return for the budget deal with the former Assembly Speaker, now-convicted felon, Sheldon Silver, and the under-indictment and soon-to-be convicted former state Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos.

The head of the Moreland Commission was feeding Cuomo's office everything that was going on - including the dirt they were digging up on Silver and Skelos - but Cuomo made the deal to shut down the commission anyway in return for a budget deal.

Had Bharara not picked up the investigation, Silver would have continued on in power, as would have Skelos.

Now with Silver convicted on all seven counts, that makes the budget shutdown and the subsequent tampering Cuomo did with the commissioners all the more suspect.

And then there's the investigation into Cuomo's donors in the Buffalo Billion Project who seem to have had the bidding process rigged for them.

That investigation is ongoing, and while we don't know of any public evidence of wrongdoing by anybody in the Cuomo administration, we also don't know what the feds have behind the scenes.

Remember, nobody knew what they had on Silver or Skelos either until the indictments.

None of this means an indictment of Cuomo administration officials or Cuomo himself is imminent.

But the conviction of Shelly Silver on all seven counts ought to give Cuomo pause considering all the smoke around the Moreland Commission shutdown and the Buffalo Billion Project.

John Flanagan "Advisor" Caught Signaling To Witness In Dean Skelos Trial

Nice:

A top-level state Senate staffer scurried out of the corruption trial of former Majority Leader Dean Skelos on Monday after being accused of coaching a witness on the stand.

Welquis “Ray” Lopez, 61, was summoned to the bench during a break in the proceedings and threatened with ejection by Manhattan federal Judge Kimba Wood.

“You’ve been nodding your head up and down and back and forth in what looks like a signal to the witness,” Wood said during testimony by a former Long Island politician who admitted serving as the bagman for an alleged payoff of Skelos’ son and co-defendant, Adam.

“If you nod your head one more time, I’m going to have court security escort you out of the courtroom.”

Sources described the former Rockville Center Republican chairman as “very close” to Skelos (R-LI), who gave him a $140,000-a-year “special adviser” job in 2011.

Despite Skelos’ resignation following his May arrest, Lopez remains on the state payroll as a $162,750-a-year adviser to interim Majority Leader John Flanagan (R-LI).

The last five state senate majority leaders have been indicted and several are already in jail - looks like John Flanagan, with these kind of shenanigans, wants to be the next.

Fun With Dean And Adam Skelos

Just a few tidbits from the Dean and Adam Skelos trial on what an affable fellow and upstanding citizen Adam Skelos is:

#Albanyontrial: Dean Skelos' son made violent threats, witness testified https://t.co/J6tgvlRMNM

— Crain's New York (@CrainsNewYork) November 19, 2015

Witness: On his 1st day of work, he told boss: "You know who I am. I'm Adam Skelos." https://t.co/6zJ3ANzvML @Newsday

— Yancey Roy (@YanceyRoy) November 18, 2015

Adam Skelos to his boss: "Guys like you couldn't shine my shoes...If you talk to me like that again, I'll smash your [expletive] head in."

— Nicole Fuller (@nicolefuller) November 18, 2015

You've got to listen to some of these Skelos Trial Wiretaps! House of Cards level corruption. #AlbanyOnTrial https://t.co/P59r18513R

— Hedge Clippers (@GoHedgeClippers) November 20, 2015

That time Adam Skelos threatened to hurt his mortgage broker. #AlbanyOnTrial pic.twitter.com/w061UbbOtH

— Susanne Craig (@susannecraig) November 21, 2015

Senator Skelos had to call his son's mortgage broker and apologize after Adam made a threat #AlbanyOnTrial pic.twitter.com/X1JxajXiFk

— William K. Rashbaum (@WRashbaum) November 21, 2015

I dunno, I'm not a defense lawyer and I'm thankfully not on trial on corruption charges, but once the wiretaps were deemed admissible as evidence in the Skelos' trial, I think I might have looked for a plea deal.

You can make a pretty good argument that Shelly Silver going to trial rather than looking for a plea deal made sense because the alleged quid pro quo schemes in his case are complex, require detailed explanations and even then, there's no slam dunk "That's definitely a crime!" moment as you hear the evidence.

I think the preponderance of the evidence in the Silver case, taken as a whole, leaves a fair observer with the impression that Silver was trying to hide where his outside income was coming from and what he was (or wasn't) doing to obtain it and those attempts at secrecy got more desperate as disclosure laws were changed over time and he risked exposure.

Whether a jury finds any of that rises to the level of a crime, well, that's hard to say, but here are the instructions the jurors will get from the judge on that point, per Joshua Saul at the NY Post:

Here's the instructions #SheldonSilver jury will hear Monday before they begin deliberations. Goodwill=OK. @nypost pic.twitter.com/nMoRMOfsc5

— Joshua Saul (@joshfromalaska) November 21, 2015

Essentially the Silver trial comes down to whether the jury buys the Silver defense argument that "friends will do favors for friends."

The Skelos case, on the other hand, has more moments of "Holy Cow, I can't believe that just happened!" than you often get in high profile trials of politicos.

It's all there - the threats and intimidation (some overt, some implied) of some pretty big players in New York by Dean and Adam, the payoffs Adam received for essentially doing nothing other than having the state senate majority leader as his dad, and Adam and Dean themselves conspiring on the phone.

We're only a few days into the Skelos trial, but the more you hear from Dean and Adam via wiretap and the more testimony you get from the prosecution witnesses, the more difficult it is to see how a jury comes in with anything other than guilty verdicts.

Earlier this week we learned that Adam Skelos' lawyer asked about a plea deal from the feds though nothing ever came from it after the feds returned communication.

I have to think Adam didn't like what he heard from the fed side about what a plea deal would entail but given how bad the evidence is here for him, I wonder if that wasn't a mistake for him.

Campbell Brown Surfaces In Dean/Adam Skelos Corruption Case Wiretaps

From the Politico NY morning email update on education:

SURPRISE GUEST IN THE DEAN SKELOS TAPES: CAMPBELL BROWN: 

From phone call between Adam and Dean Skelos Dec. 14. 2014:  

“AS: What are you up to?  

DS: Um going into the city. Meeting with some billionaires.  

AS: Who are you meeting with?  

DS: On school tax credit stuff. Campbell Brown.  

AS: Oh. Ok.  

DS. A reporter, former reporter. 

AS: Dad, you gotta take these names down….All I need is contacts. I’ll take care of the rest.” 

(Dean laughs)

Some billionaires and Campbell Brown meet with crooked Dean Skelos over "school tax credit stuff".

Love it.

Maybe they could have gotten exactly what they wanted on the "school tax credit stuff"" if they had provided Adam Skelos with a no-show job at Families for Excellent Schools.

Just so long as they didn't ask him to, you know, show up for work.

Cuomo Takes Credit For Silver Indictment

Man, you can't make this up:

He disbanded his own anti-corruption commission before its work was done, but Gov. Cuomo claimed Tuesday a law he approved spurred corruption charges against one of New York’s state legislative leaders.

While addressing students at Harvard University on Tuesday, Cuomo was asked why five legislative leaders in a row were indicted on corruption charges — including former Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos, who are currently on trial in federal courts.

“We have passed all kinds of laws, more transparency and disclosure laws than ever before,” Cuomo said.

“One of the state leaders was indicted because of one of the laws that I passed that required more disclosure,” he added.

Had the US attorney not picked up the Moreland files and pursued the cases the commission was looking into, Sheldon Silver would not have been indicted.

In fact, there is an argument to be made that, since the head of the Moreland Commission was feeding Cuomo's office everything that the commission was doing, and since the commission was looking into both then Assembly Speaker Silver and then state Senate Majority Leader Skelos, Cuomo knew Silver and Skelos were both targets and made a deal to shut the commission with them anyway in exchange for a lukewarm package of ethics reform and a budget deal.

Takes a lot of chutzpah for Cuomo to claim he's the reason Silver was indicted when Silver wouldn't have been indicted had not Preet Bharara intervened.

Cuomo Appointees Planned Fake Bridgegate Memo

Andrea Bernstein at WNYC:

In the Bridgegate scandal, much has been made of what New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie knew and when he knew it. But the other governor who also runs the Port Authority, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, has long downplayed his knowledge of the scandal.

Documents filed Tuesday night by Bridgegate defendant Bill Baroni suggest that was a deliberate strategy.

Cuomo wasn't asked about the politically-motivated lane closures on the George Washington Bridge until three months after they occurred. "I don't know anything more basically than what was in the newspapers. This basically is a New Jersey issue," Cuomo told upstate radio station WCNY.

But now a new set of emails suggests that Cuomo's top appointees at the Port Authority were, two months before those remarks, actively discussing how to respond to the burgeoning scandal with top Cuomo aide Howard Glaser.

One of the suggestions? That Pat Foye, the Port Authority executive director, produce two different memos — one for the governor's office and a fake one that might some day be made public.

"How about the following — he types a detailed memo that he produces on his home computer, gives a hard copy to the 2nd floor and then type up a general memo for his files."

“Second floor” is Albany-speak for the floor of the state capitol where Cuomo and his top staff have their offices.

The email, penned by David Garten, the chief of staff to Port Authority Vice Chair Scott Rechler, goes on to say: "that way we have a thorough documented account, it's in the 2nd floor's hands...and then a general memo at the PA in case we get subpoenaed."

...


The newly-released emails suggests a level of communication with the governor's office about the scandal that Cuomo has never acknowledged. Glaser is described as speaking with both Foye and Rechler, though it's unclear what Glaser relayed to Cuomo.

Cuomo's press office did not respond to inquiries about what he learned from Glaser. Glaser also rebuffed email and phone inquiries. 

Two sets of memos, one real and one phonied up in case there's a subpoena.

Want to bet that's not the first time the geniuses in the Cuomo administration have come up with that strategy for something politically and/or criminally dicey?

The Skelos And Silver Trials

The corruption trial of Dean Skelos and his son Adam starts today.

Sheldon Silver's corruption trial continues today.

On Friday, prosecutors detailed Silver's shenanigans with Governor Cuomo's favorite donor, Glenwood Management.

Zach Fink reported that defense attorneys aren't disputing any of the details the prosecution is presenting, just claiming that none of the actions Shelly took amount to crimes:

Prosecutors have been busy outlining an alleged corruption scheme in which Sheldon Silver steered Glenwood Management, a large real estate company with business before the state, to a small law firm for tax work. Silver then collected referral fees. Prosecutors say this amounted to a quid-pro-quo.

Defense attorneys aren't disputing any of the details. They just maintain that the former Assembly speaker never broke the law.

Testifying Friday was lobbyist Brian Meara, who represents Glenwood Management. He explained how lobbying works for advancing legislation. He also testified that Silver had a longstanding relationship with Glenwood management that included drafting bills that were - if not necessarily helpful to Glenwood - certainly not as harmful as they could have been. Meara said Silver had a private relationship with Glenwood, while at the same time advocating publicly for tenant rights over issues like the rent regulations which need to be renewed every four years.

Meara said he had no knowledge of the fees Silver was receiving from the law firm, but did say he had concerns for Silver politically in terms of how it might look for him to be working so closely to keep Glenwood satisfied.

Testimony continues on Monday. The government is expected to call two witnesses who work for the state Assembly. They are Lisa Reidm who works in compliance, and Michael Whyland, who served as Silver's spokesman and now works for current Speaker Carl Heastie.

Fink said yesterday, given the way the case has gone so far, he wouldn't be surprised if Silver is acquitted:

.@ZackFinkNews says on @EffectiveOnAir this a.m. that he would not be surprised if Preet Bharara fails to get a conviction of Shelly Silver.

— Morgan Pehme (@morganpehme) November 15, 2015

I think there's something to that - the Skelos case, with the wiretaps, seems like a slam dunk case while this one is much more complex.

Given that one juror fell asleep during the Meara testimony, you have to wonder what the jurors are thinking about all of this.

The sleeping juror doesn't look good, that's for sure.

If Silver walks, that will be a big hit to Bharara's prestige and could affect the other cases the feds are working on - including the one into Cuomo's Buffalo Billion Project.

Sleeping Through The Shelly Silver Trial

Oy:

Some jurors were behaving badly at Sheldon Silver’s corruption trial in Manhattan federal court on Friday.

A woman nodded off during crucial morning testimony — and remained in dreamland for a full 12 minutes — while an alternate was more interested in doodling than paying attention.

The woman’s catnap came as lobbyist Brian Meara was testifying about a meeting he arranged between the former Assembly speaker and a Glenwood Management bigwig to talk about legislation the real-estate company wanted passed in Albany regarding rent regulation and tax abatements.

She dozed with her head slumped forward from at least 10:03 a.m. to about 10:15 a.m., when she woke with a start and started stretching her wrist.

The alternate, meanwhile, spent much of the morning sketching a full page of cartoon-like faces in pen in his juror notebook, paying no attention to the testimony.

Apparently, the judge, prosecutors and defense team were too absorbed in the testimony to notice the nap break and doodling.

Makes you proud to be an American, doesn't it?