Proposed For-Profit Charter School In Rochester Linked To Cuomo Corruption Probe

We've already had one education link to the ever-expanding Cuomo corruption probe, with former Cuomo aide Joe Percoco's wife, the ex-teacher, getting paid for some education consultant work from a company of interest in the federal investigation into Governor Andrew Cuomo's economic development programs.

We now have a second education link:

Maple Street Charter School, the for-profit charter school hoping to open in Rochester next year, has paid tens of thousands of dollars to a lobbying firm at the center of a rapidly expanding federal investigation into improper influence in Albany, state records show.

Maple Street's parent company, National Heritage Academies, has been using the Albany-based lobbying firm Whiteman Osterman & Hanna since at least 2007. A WOH subsidiary in Washington, D.C., was led until recently by Todd Howe, a former associate of Gov. Andrew Cuomo who is at the center of the probe by U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara.

The Buffalo News reported earlier this week that Bharara issued a subpoena to Cuomo's office requesting, among other things, all documents relating to Howe and WOH. That would likely include aspects of its lobbying on behalf of the Maple Street application.

...

The most recent disclosure report shows NHA paid WOH $12,000 in the last six months of 2015 for lobbying related to charter schools. The expected lobbying targets included Cuomo's office, the state Assembly and Legislature and Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren.

In the same six-month time period, NHA also paid $45,000 to Park Strategies, a powerful lobbying firm run by former U.S. Sen. Al D'Amato, R-N.Y.

NHA Chairman J.C. Huizenga has given more than $400,000 in campaign contributions in New York since 2005. Most of it went to Republicans, but he also has given $49,000 to a Cuomo fundraising entity.

For-profit charters are banned in New York State, in part because a previous NHA for-profit charter was such a problem, but NHA got this current proposal through a loophole - the SUNY charter board used one charter slot left over from 2007 to give the Maple Street Charter School the opportunity to open under the old, less onerous charter rules.

How did they get the loophole exception?

Could it be the lobbying through WOH or D'Amato's Park Strategies?

Could it be the $49K to Cuomo?

Could it be a mixture of all three?

You bet it could.

And then, just as a Buffalo Billion Project RFP was written so that only a Cuomo donor could win it and a SUNY dorm RFP was written so that only a Cuomo donor could win it, this RFP was written so that NHA was pretty much guaranteed to win it:

Because it predates the 2010 ban, that charter can go to a for-profit provider. The request for proposals was written in such a way that NHA was one of only two possible candidates; the request also was not publicized along with a concurrent, broader charter school proposal cycle.

Ah, such fun in New York - if you pay-to-play, you can achieve just about anything.

What an exciting message to teach the kids at the new NHA Maple Street Charter, with its emphasis on "character education."

But I'm guessing now that there's some sunlight on this deal, the Maple Street Charter School may not open as NHA hoped.

Federal Investigation Into Cuomo's Economic Development Program Expands Statewide

Tom Precious of the Buffalo News does an amazing job of putting together the various strands of the federal investigation into Governor Cuomo's economic development programs.

According to Precious, here is what U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara has subpoenaed:

All documents relating to the October 2013 request for proposals for the Buffalo Billion program as well as a development project by the same state university-created corporation – Fort Schuyler Management Corp. – in Syracuse, along with a March 2015 RFP by a sister entity for a since-stalled dormitory project at SUNY Polytechnic in Albany;

• Details about certain actions taken by Percoco, Howe, several top current Cuomo advisers and the head of the state Power Authority, as well as Peter Cutler, a longtime Democratic operative from Buffalo who recently left Cuomo’s economic development field office in Western New York. The New York Post first reported that last week. Cutler last week confirmed he, too, had received a subpoena from Bharara’s office, though he declined to say what he is being asked to provide;

• Any actions by those individuals “for the benefit of” nearly two dozen companies, including LPCiminelli, the Buffalo construction company handling construction of the RiverBend complex, and Norstar Development USA, a Buffalo-based company headed by the former top housing czar in the administration of the late Gov. Mario Cuomo, the current governor’s father;

• Phone logs, visitor logs and calendar entries going back to January 2012 that might show meetings or contacts between administration officials and two dozen people or entities, including Ciminelli, Norstar, several Syracuse firms, a Brooklyn real estate developer, a Rochester real estate company, and two firms that, according to Percoco, paid him up to $120,000 in consulting fees sometime in 2014. Also on the list: Alain Kaloyeros, the SUNY Polytechnic president and Cuomo point person on the Buffalo Billion, as well as Howe.

In addition, Bharara wants to see what the administration has been saying internally about the now expanding Buffalo Billion probe. The subpoena seeks “all documents or communications related to the investigation by the U.S. Attorney’s office” that are in possession of Cuomo’s office.

The broad subpoena has “driven the administration crazy,” according to a source close to the matter.

It seeks all documents Cuomo’s office has on file about Howe, the Washington lobbyist and Cuomo insider. He has been described as the go-between person between companies looking to expand to upstate ventures, such as the Buffalo Billion and high-tech projects in other upstate cities that SUNY Polytechnic, and the state’s economic development office oversee, according to sources.

Prosecutors want Cuomo’s office to also give them all documents relating to WOH Government Solutions, the lobbying entity Howe headed before he was recently fired, and its parent company, Whiteman Osterman & Hanna, the Albany lobbying and law firm. That firm has worn many hats, representing, for instance, SUNY Polytechnic or one of its subsidiary corporations and LPCiminelli.

Precious writes that "Bharara wants to know if key Cuomo people, past and present, did anything to “benefit” several companies that have been a part of various state-financed projects."

Now it's possible that he's looking at just Cuomo's minions like former aides Joe Percoco and Todd Howe or Suny Polytechnic's Alain Kaloyeros to see if and how they've enriched themselves off the contracting process with many of the companies subpoenaed in the investigation.

But it's also quite possible that he's looking at the donations Cuomo received from those subpoenaed companies, in which case Cuomo himself may have a bit of trouble.

See, it's a quid pro quo to solicit campaign donations in return for favors, contracts, tax subsidies or grants, so if there's any evidence anything like that occurred, Governor Cuomo would have some legal problems.

The most interesting instance where you could see Preet making that case is with COR Development and the report that came this week from Jimmy Vielkind at Politico NY.

The gist is this:

On December 14, 2015, Governor Cuomo attended a dinner hosted by Todd Howe, his former aide who was then a lobbyist for a subsidiary of Whiteman, Osterman & Hanna.

The dinner took place "in a small upstairs room of the Fort Orange Club, a baronial brick retreat across the street from Whiteman’s Albany offices and up the block from the state Capitol."

At the dinner?

Cuomo and Howe (who Cuomo said last week he doesn't know that well), two other aides (Bill Mulrow, the governor's secretary, and Joe Percoco, Cuomo's closest aide who is also reported to be under federal investigation for conflicts of interest and other corruption charges), Onondaga County Executive Joanie Mahoney, a key Republican ally of the administration, and three executives from COR Development, a company of interest in Preet Bharara's federal investigation.

Cuomo took in $25,000 in five checks that night, three from COR executives, one from one of the wives of a COR executive and one from an LLC linked to COR Development.

COR Development has been Cuomo's biggest donor from Central New York, giving him more than $300,000 since 2010, including $50,000 in the last year.

And what did COR Development get in return?

The company has received contracts from the state for numerous projects under Cuomo. COR built a $15 million film hub for New York state in 2015 on land it owns in DeWitt. Cuomo announced COR would also build a $90 million facility for Soraa, an LED lighting manufacturer at the same nanotechnology hub.

COR is also developing the Syracuse Inner Harbor, but that project has run into trouble. The city of Syracuse, which named COR as its developer, is now suing COR over tax breaks for the Inner Harbor project that the company obtained from Onondaga County's industrial development agency.

There's another interesting Cuomo angle here too.

Cuomo's D.A. buddy, William Fitzpatrick, who served as a Cuomo ally and apologist on the Moreland Commission that Cuomo shut down in 2014 (and whose wife needed to be reappointed to a judgeship by Cuomo), is investigating Syracuse Mayor Stephanie Miner (once a Cuomo ally, now a Cuomo enemy) over the lawsuit the City of Syracuse brought against COR Development.

That Fitzpatrick investigation appears to be both frivolous and retaliatory, judging by this piece of news from Syracuse.com:

SYRACUSE, N.Y. -€“ Saying he does not intend to assist a "fishing expedition,'' an Onondaga County judge this week delivered a setback to District Attorney William Fitzpatrick and his efforts to investigate alleged wrongdoing at Syracuse City Hall.

County Court Judge Walter Hafner Jr. blocked Fitzpatrick's subpoena for emails, notes, drafts and other communications produced by Syracuse city lawyers, saying the DA made "no showing'' that the documents were part of any crime or fraud.

...

The district attorney, who criticized Syracuse Mayor Stephanie Miner for bringing a lawsuit against COR Development Co., the Inner Harbor developer, has launched an investigation into Miner and some of her political allies.

Among other things, Fitzpatrick is looking for evidence of alleged wrongdoing connected with what he called "phony affidavits'' filed in the lawsuit by two city councilors who are friendly with Miner.

But in his ruling to decide what documents city hall must turn over, Hafner said Fitzpatrick has not produced evidence of wrongdoing to justify his demand to see communications between city lawyers and other city officials. Most of those records are protected from disclosure by attorney-client privilege, the judge wrote.

In response to the district attorney's request that Hafner review all the city hall materials privately to determine whether any should be forwarded to the grand jury, Hafner called that proposal "patently absurd.''

"It is not . . . the function of this court to assist the district attorney in a fishing expedition,'' Hafner wrote.

Interesting how Cuomo's ally/apologist, William Fitzpatrick, is taking on Cuomo's enemy, Syracuse Mayor Stephanie Miner for Cuomo's biggest donor in Central New York, COR Development.

Here's Miner's rationale for the lawsuit:

SYRACUSE, N.Y. – Mayor Stephanie Miner set out Tuesday to kill the biggest Syracuse development in years – the $324 million Syracuse Inner Harbor project – after the developer went around the city to negotiate lucrative tax breaks from Onondaga County.

The mayor is trying to halt a transformative Inner Harbor project that she herself launched four years ago, after previous mayors tried and failed. The ambitious new waterfront neighborhood would have been her most visible accomplishment as mayor.

Miner's drastic move came after the Syracuse Industrial Development Agency was squeezed out of control over the Inner Harbor deal by a developer with strong ties to Gov. Andrew Cuomo and to Cuomo's allies in Onondaga County leadership.

"What you are seeing here is a clash of philosophy on economic development,'' Miner said in an interview today. She said the lawsuit aims to preserve the city's sovereignty over how the project gets done.

''It's about this: The developer doesn't get to set the terms and conditions of all the things that they want to do, which, in my experience is different from what has been done previous to my administration,'' Miner said.

Miner filed a lawsuit Tuesday that aims to halt the Inner Harbor project by nullifying the city's sale of the land to COR Development Co. She said COR should be required to meet significant local hiring and job-training quotas in return for any discount on property taxes.

Also should note that Cuomo's Republican ally, Onondaga County Executive Joanie Mahoney (who just happened to be at the December 14, 2015 fundraiser with COR Development, Cuomo, Howe and Company), has launched attacks against Miner for the COR lawsuit, calling Miner "emotional" and hurting the City of Syracuse for "lashing out" after getting her feelings hurt.

Yeah, kid you not - that's what she said.

There's so much here in this COR Development story and at the center of all of it is not Todd Howe, the lobbyist and former aide to Cuomo who is reported to be under investigation by the feds, but rather one Andrew Cuomo, whose allies have launched attacks and investigations against one of his enemies after said enemy filed a lawsuit against his bestest donor in Central New York.

This Syracuse/COR story is just one of the strands Preet Bharara is following in his investigation - as Tom Precious reported in his Buffalo News story, there are many others as well.

But it's this COR Development strand that really intrigues the more one follows it, because you can see how the guy at the center of so much of the action is Governor Andrew Cuomo.

Cuomo told reporters last week that as far as he knows, the investigation is just related to two of his former aides, Percoco and Howe, thus sending out the not-so-subtle message that he himself is not under investigation.

Perhaps that's how the investigation started, but what do you think Bharara does when he gets all this interesting information and evidence in the COR Development strand?

Does he not continue to follow up to find out just how the tax breaks got handed out, why Stephanie Miner was pushed out of the deal and Cuomo's Republican ally, Joanie Mahoney, elevated, why Cuomo's D.A. ally/apologist is investigating Miner (and was it at the behest of Cuomo himself)?

Oh, so much to look at here, so much to marvel at.

It's the perfect Cuomoesque ratfuck that got pulled here, but in the end, if Bharara follows this Syracuse/COR strand to its very end, it may be Governor Cuomo himself who gets screwed.

Precious wrote that the Cuomo administration is being "driven crazy" by all the information Bharara is looking for.

Good - couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of people.

Schneiderman Investigates Cuomo Ally For Rigging Bid For A Cuomo Donor

Another day, another corruption investigation involving a Cuomo ally and/or associate:

State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s office is investigating potential bid-rigging in the development of a dormitory on the campus of SUNY Polytechnic Institute, according to a source with knowledge of the investigation.

SUNY Poly’s CEO Alain Kaloyeros, the state’s highest-paid employee and a major player in Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s upstate high-tech development blueprint, is a key focus of the investigation, according to the source.

Subpoenas were issued in September to SUNY Poly as well as its development arm, Fuller Road Management Corp., as well as two Albany-based companies involved in the dorm project, Columbia Development and EYP Architecture & Engineering.

...

The Attorney General’s subpoenas were not the only ones received by SUNY Poly last fall.

The same month, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District Preet Bharara’s office subpoenaed records from the school as part of its investigation into the Buffalo Billion program.

At the time, Cuomo said, “You can have investigations but that does not mean there’s any ‘there’ there, or that anyone did anything wrong.”

This SUNY case mirrored the Buffalo Billion case wherein a bid was rigged for a Cuomo donor to win:

A request-for-proposals issued by the school asked that the dorms be located within a 10-minute walk of SUNY Poly’s Fuller Road campus and required that the developer be based in the Capital Region and have experience in dorm construction.

The requirements matched the abilities of Columbia Development, which had been buying land along Loughlin Street adjacent to the SUNY Poly campus. Columbia is also the lead developer of the $190 million ZEN building on the campus, and the company said that it planned to become a tenant in that building.

SUNY Poly later said that Columbia had won the bid and would likely build three dormitories and parking on land that included the Loughlin Street properties.
...
 Columbia and its various entities have given the governor’s campaign at least $200,000 over the past three years. Half of that sum was donated to Cuomo’s political operation on a single day — June 17, 2014 — by two Columbia LLCs that each made $50,000 donations.

The same day, Nicolla’s wife, Jessica Nicolla, made a $50,000 donation to the governor’s campaign that, according to Board of Elections records, was made using her maiden name and an address in Muncie, Ind., her home town.

The same scam was worked in the Buffalo Billion with LP Ciminelli:

 Not content with just building a factory for Solar City, the Cuomo administration appears to have rigged the bid by putting in the RFP (request for proposals) a stipulation that only a company with 50 years in business could bid. Well..... interestingly there is only one company in Buffalo that fit that bill, L.P. Ciminelli. Even more interesting is that Ciminelli is one of Cuomo's top 100 donors. Wow! What a coincidence!

When the information came out about the 50 year requirement the excuse was that it "was a typographical error" and it had been corrected and it should have said 15 years. But, Ciminelli was still awarded the contract.

Take a look at your keyboard. How does someone mistakenly type

50 instead of 15? I believe that excuse like I believe Cuomo supports education or your 2nd amendment rights.

Ciminelli was of course a Cuomo donor:

LPCiminelli, whose chairman and chief executive, Louis P. Ciminelli, is a financial backer of Mr. Cuomo’s, was ultimately selected to construct the SolarCity factory.

Records show that the Ciminelli family was supportive of the governor’s campaign during the period when developers were being sought for Buffalo Billion projects.

On Nov. 19, 2013, Mr. Cuomo traveled to Buffalo for a fund-raiser. Campaign finance records show that Mr. Ciminelli’s wife provided facilities or services to the Cuomo campaign that day worth $2,350 — known as an in-kind contribution. A Cuomo campaign spokesman said the contribution paid for a private gathering that Mr. Ciminelli hosted for the governor that night.

Three weeks later, on Dec. 10, LPCiminelli submitted its proposal for development work as part of the Buffalo Billion. In early January, Mr. Ciminelli and his wife gave more money to the governor — $29,200 in total. Mr. Ciminelli was so generous, he donated more to Mr. Cuomo than was allowed by law, so a portion of his donation was refunded.

Later that month, LPCiminelli was selected as one of the winning developers, and would eventually build the SolarCity factory.

The subpoena to SUNY Polytechnic sought records related to monetary and in-kind donations to any state elected official.

A pattern of quid pro quo - bid rigging for Cuomo's donors, donations coming Cuomo's way?

Kathy Hochul To Attend Fundraiser From Anti-Union Group Linked To Safety Violations, Workplace Fatalities

Remember when AFT President Randi Weingarten made robocalls for bank lobbyist Kathy Hochul when Hochul was running for lieutenant governor and was having some problems dispensing with her opponent, Tim Wu, in the polling?

Here's how Hochul pays Union Prez Weingarten back - by attending a fundraiser for her boss, Andrew Cuomo, given by an anti-union group with links to construction firms with histories of safety violations and worker fatalities:

The attorney for a campaign against union construction labor is co-hosting a fundraiser for Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

On Monday afternoon, the founding partners of Gotham Government Relations invited powerbrokers to a Jan. 7 fundraiser for Cuomo at the home of Brad and Cheryl Gerstman in Roslyn, on Long Island.

The hosts are listed as the Gerstmans and David and Heather Schwartz. Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul is scheduled to make an appearance, according to the invitation. It’s not clear whether Cuomo himself will attend.

...

State records indicate their firm lobbies for 400 Times Square Associates LLC, which is reportedly using non-union labor to develop a hotel at 577 Ninth Ave., where a construction worker recently died.

As of last month, Gerstman was also an attorney for the Rinaldi Group, a building contractor whose license was pulled for running unsafe job sites. The city launched an investigation into Rinaldi after a worker perished at a Rinaldi construction site in Midtown.

Gerstman is also frontman for BuildingNYC, a group launched this month that advocates against union construction labor.

There's so much wrong here.

First, that Cuomo doesn't have the guts to attend himself shows you what a coward he is - if he wants the anti-union money with the blood on it, the least he can do is show up at the fundraiser to take it with his own hands.

Second, as many of us expected with Hochul's past as a bank lobbyist, she is happily anti-union and demonstrates this with her attendance at this anti-union group's fundraiser.

Third, Cuomo's been making a lot of hay recently with liberals, pushing for some prison reforms, pushing for a minimum wage hike and the like, but liberals ought not to be fooled by any of this.

Nothing's changed with the anti-union/anti-worker Cuomo, clearly, or he wouldn't be taking the blood money from the anti-union group linked to construction firms with histories of safety violations and worker fatalities.

As for Hochul, let's just note that if there suddenly is a vacancy n the governor's mansion and she gets elevated to governor, she's squarely shown her anti-union/anti-worker bona fides.

Seasonal Sentiments In The Age Of Cuomo

On the road for a bit today, but thought I'd leave you with a couple of seasonal sentiments before I go - the first from Bill Nojay:

"Is the governor on the target list?” asked Assemblymember Bill Nojay about Preet Bharara and @NYGovCuomo. https://t.co/cfM39BfEHv

— Louis Flores ✍ (@maslowsneeds) December 26, 2015

 Which leads to this nice sentiment:

Coming to a precinct near you soon @fud31 @RichAzzopardi @NYGovCuomo @JonCampbellGAN @powellnyt @ZackFinkNews pic.twitter.com/vKUJevcqdM

— Randy Credico (@Credico2016) December 26, 2015

Keep your eye on the investigation into Cuomo's Buffalo Billion Project and donors - with subpoenas having gone out to Cuomo donors and state entities involved in what appears to be a rigged bidding process, that strikes me as the area where has he the most vulnerability.

This was the Buffalo News story into that back in September:

Federal prosecutor Preet Bharara’s investigation into the Buffalo Billion is part of a larger probe into other development projects, including the Buffalo Schools Construction Project, sources close to the investigation said Friday.

The first hint of an investigation by the Manhattan U.S. Attorney came in the form of subpoenas demanding information on several large-scale state initiatives, many of them with close ties to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and the SUNY Polytechnic Institute in Albany.

Sources said the subpoenas went out across the state and seek documents and records regarding the bidding process on those projects, as well as any communication between state officials and private contractors.

...

Bharara’s office declined to comment on the new investigation, but stopped well short of refuting the New York Post’s initial account of the investigation.

“I’m not saying the story is baseless. I’m saying we can’t comment,” James M. Margolin, a Bharara spokesman, said Friday.

The Post, in its story, said Bharara’s office is looking at multimillion-dollar state contracts that led to the construction of high-tech, drug-development and clean-energy businesses.

“It’s a comprehensive look at the bidding process,” a source told the Post. “They’re looking at communications between contractors and state officials.”

We haven't had any leaks about the Buffalo Billion Project investigation in a while.

We'll see if the silence continues into the new year or if the leaks come again, signaling a new phase for the investigation.

Again, this may not end in an indictment and perp walk for Cuomo.

But given how defensive the Cuomo administration is about the investigation (see here and here), you know they're worried about something.

Is Cuomo Next On The List For Criminal Charges?

Mike Vilensky has a piece in the Wall Street Journal on how U.S. Attorney for the Southern District Preet Bharara is shaking up Albany politics by scoring criminal convictions against New York power brokers like former Assembly Speaker Shelly Silver and former state Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos.

I found the part about where Bharara goes post-Silver and Skelos convictions most interesting:

Last year, Mr. Bharara’s office was examining the role of Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo and his aides in shutting down a state anticorruption commission, The Wall Street Journal has previously reported. Mr. Bharara’s office interviewed several of Mr. Cuomo’s top aides in connection with that probe, but it hasn’t charged anyone with wrongdoing.

Mr. Cuomo, who was previously the state’s attorney general, has said his administration is cooperating with the inquiry and has defended his decision to disband what was known as the Moreland Commission.

A spokesman for Mr. Bharara declined to discuss the status of that investigation or another probe examining the bidding process for an upstate development project championed by the governor. Mr. Cuomo said in September he didn’t know anything about the Buffalo probe, and his office had no further comment Friday.

Reacting to the conviction of Mr. Skelos, the governor said in a prepared statement on Friday: “There can be no tolerance for those who use, and seek to use, public service for private gain.”

Stephen Gillers, a law professor at New York University, said he is confident Mr. Bharara will “go where the evidence leads, without fear or favor.”

Cuomo's office may have had no official comment about the Buffalo Billion probe when the Wall Street Journal inquired about it on Friday, but an unnamed source in the administration with a penchant for asking rhetorical questions sure did have a lot to say to the Buffalo News last week in defense of the project and the bidding process around it.

That source - an unnamed "state official" - gave an "extended interview" to the Buffalo News along with providing "dozens of documents" in defense of how the Buffalo Billion Project bids were handled and doled out.

The bids were won by two of Cuomo's donors in a process that looked like it was rigged for those very outcomes.

We haven't heard much about the Buffalo Billion Project probe since the initial slate of leaks in September that Bharara's office had launched an investigation into the project and had subpoenaed entities involved - including at least one Cuomo donor and two of the state entities that handled much of the process, SUNY Poly and the Empire State Development Corporation.

That some unnamed "state official" felt the need to give an "extended interview" and provide "dozens of documents" to the Buffalo News in defense of the project last week suggests to me that Governor Cuomo is nervous about where that investigation is going.

He may be even more nervous after Preet Bharara issued his first-ever tweet just as Cuomo was announcing his Buffalo Billion Project Part Deux awards for other parts of the state on Thursday:

As alleged, this is my official Twitter account. And this, allegedly, is my first tweet. Stay tuned. . .

— US Attorney Bharara (@PreetBharara) December 10, 2015

"Stay tuned..." is an interesting tweet to issue considering those were the very words Bharara used back in January at the Silver criminal charges announcement when he was asked if any other Albany pols were in his sights.

That Bharara chose to issue that first-ever tweet at the exact moment Governor Cuomo was having a vaunted announcement for his Buffalo Billion Project Part Deux development program was even more interesting, since Bharara is investigating Cuomo's Buffalo Billion Project and has sent out subpoenas to state entities and Cuomo donors involved in the process.

There's been a lot of skepticism from readers of the blog about whether Bharara is going after Cuomo or not, which I understand. 

To have a U.S. attorney take down a sitting governor - it's not often done (except in Illinois, of course.)

That said, I've gotten more optimistic since September that this is Bharara's end game. 

The leaks about the Buffalo Billion investigation were especially important in shaping my thinking on this.

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.)

If the pattern is followed, the leaks about subpoenas going out to Cuomo donors didn't just drop out of the sky - they came from Bharara's office and were a shot across the bow, aimed at The Good Ship Cuomo. 

Cuomo heard the shot, you can be sure, because he got very defensive (saying something like "This is the way business has been done for over 100 years in this state...", which I believe was also Shelly Silver's unsuccessful defense against the criminal charges he was just convicted on) and has gotten even more defensive since (otherwise why have an unnamed "state official" who sounded an awful lot like Cuomo himself give an "extended interview" along with "dozens of documents" to the Buffalo News in attempt to defend the Buffalo Billion Project?)

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

But one thing is pretty clear to me from all the wrangling between Cuomo and Bharara since September:

Bharara's looking into Cuomo very, very closely and Cuomo knows it and fears it.

And Cuomo should fear it.

There's the Buffalo Billion Project probe, there's the investigation into Cuomo's shutdown of the Moreland Commission (which takes on new resonance now that the two guys who were part of the shutdown deal are both convicted of corruption) and there may indeed be some stuff we are totally unaware that is being looked into as well.

Couple those investigations with the feeling you get that Bharara really likes sticking it to Cuomo and if I were Sheriff Andy, I'd be worried too, especially since Bharara got a conviction on Silver without proving an explicit quid pro quo between Shelly and his marks.

Cuomo Acknowledges Communicating With Donor/Contractor At Center Of Corruption Probe

Azi Paybarah at Capital NY:

Governor Andrew Cuomo said he played no role in a campaign contributor winning a mutli-million-dollar construction bid in Buffalo that is now reportedly the subject of a probe by Southern District U.S. attorney Preet Bharara.

As part of the reported investigation, Bharara's office served subpoenas on the State University of New York Polytechnic Institute, whose president is heavily involved in Cuomo's economic development programs upstate.

“SUNY has administered the grant process, so literally all I know is what I read in the newspaper, but I’m very proud of what we’re doing in Buffalo,” Cuomo told reporters in Harlem at an unrelated event.

...

The probe into Buffalo reportedly focuses on how Lou Ciminelli, who donated more than $96,000 to Cuomo’s re-election campaign, won a narrowly tailored bid to construct a solar panel factory in Buffalo worth around $750 million.

Asked if he was confident the contract was not influenced by the donations, Cuomo replied, “SUNY has administered billions of dollars' worth of programs and they’ve done it all well.”

The governor did acknowledge having communicated with Ciminelli, but said the contract was left in the hands of SUNY officials.

“I have probably spoken with him but I have nothing to do with the selection whatsoever. That was handled by SUNY,” Cuomo said.

You can see more on that donor, Louis P. Ciminelli, and his connections to Andrew Cuomo and various levels of government here.

You can see a little more on other Cuomo donors who may be the focus of Bharara's corruption probe here.

Let me remind readers of the pattern we have seen with Preet Bharara investigations.

First comes the leak and/or leaks about high-powered figures like Sheldon Silver or Dean Skelos.

Then come either the denials or obfuscations from the high-powered figures who are the focus of the leaks.

Then come some more leaks that indicate criminal charges are coming soon.

Then the arrests and criminal charges/indictments.

Finally, there are usually a couple more charges thrown on after the fact for good measure.

As memory serves me, this is how events played out in both the Silver and Skelos cases.

Hard to say if that's how things play out here, but the more we learn about the probe and the number of Cuomo donors involved coupled with Cuomo's denials that he had nothing to do with any of this and besides, it's just politics - well, it is starting to look like this story fits the pattern.

Whether it reaches as high as Cuomo himself, that's another matter.

But I can't remember a time where Bharara leaked info in a case like this that didn't end up with criminal charges in the end.

And now that we have Cuomo acknowledging personally communicating with one of the donors - that does makes things a little more interesting.