2 crooks- Cuomo and Klein, a perfect matchIf your gut tells you that Andrew Cuomo is a sleazy transactional careerist who has no problem living in a corrupt political environment and making it work for him... give your gut a pat on the back. This morning, the NY Times' top political investigative reporter, Bill Rashbaum, along with colleagues Susanne Craig and Tom Kaplan, explained how Cuomo hobbled state ethics investigations. Corrupt is the nature of conservativism. It always was and always will be. Don't ever mix Andrew Cuomo up with his dad.
With Albany rocked by a seemingly endless barrage of scandals and arrests, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo set up a high-powered commission last summer to root out corruption in state politics. It was barely two months old when its investigators, hunting for violations of campaign-finance laws, issued a subpoena to a media-buying firm that had placed millions of dollars’ worth of advertisements for the New York State Democratic Party.The investigators did not realize that the firm, Buying Time, also counted Mr. Cuomo among its clients, having bought the airtime for his campaign when he ran for governor in 2010.Word that the subpoena had been served quickly reached Mr. Cuomo’s most senior aide, Lawrence S. Schwartz. He called one of the commission’s three co-chairs, William J. Fitzpatrick, the district attorney in Syracuse.“This is wrong,” Mr. Schwartz said, according to Mr. Fitzpatrick, whose account was corroborated by three other people told about the call at the time. He said the firm worked for the governor, and issued a simple directive:“Pull it back.”The subpoena was swiftly withdrawn. The panel’s chief investigator explained why in an email to the two other co-chairs later that afternoon.“They apparently produced ads for the governor,” she wrote.The pulled-back subpoena was the most flagrant example of how the commission, established with great ceremony by Mr. Cuomo in July 2013, was hobbled almost from the outset by demands from the governor’s office.While the governor now maintains he had every right to monitor and direct the work of a commission he had created, many commissioners and investigators saw the demands as politically motivated interference that hamstrung an undertaking that the governor had publicly vowed would be independent.
Remember Nixon's Saturday Night Massacre (1973), the straw the broke the camel's back in the then-unfolding Watergate scandal? Attorney General Elliot Richardson had appointed Archibald Cox as an independent special prosecutor to investigate Watergate and when Cox proved too independent and too competent, Nixon demanded Richardson fire Cox. Richardson resigned instead. Nixon then turned to Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus and gave him the same directive. Ruckelshaus resigned as well and Nixon then turned to a young far right ideologue in the Department who was already known as a mindless zombie to do the task. Robert Bork, later rejected for the Supreme Court because of it, fired Cox. Apparently there were no Richardsons or Ruckelshauses in the Cuomo scandal, just Borks.
The commission developed a list of promising targets, including a lawmaker suspected of using campaign funds to support a girlfriend in another state and pay tanning-salon bills. The panel also highlighted activities that it saw as politically odious but perfectly legal, like exploiting a loophole to bundle enormous campaign contributions.But a three-month examination by the New York Times found that the governor’s office deeply compromised the panel’s work, objecting whenever the commission focused on groups with ties to Mr. Cuomo or on issues that might reflect poorly on him.Ultimately, Mr. Cuomo abruptly disbanded the commission halfway through what he had indicated would be an 18-month life. And now, as the Democratic governor seeks a second term in November, federal prosecutors are investigating the roles of Mr. Cuomo and his aides in the panel’s shutdown and are pursuing its unfinished business.Before its demise, Mr. Cuomo’s aides repeatedly pressured the commission, many of whose members and staff thought they had been given a once-in-a-career chance at cleaning up Albany. As a result, the panel’s brief existence-- and the writing and editing of its sole creation, a report of its preliminary findings-- was marred by infighting, arguments and accusations. Things got so bad that investigators believed a Cuomo appointee was monitoring their communications without their knowledge. Resignations further crippled the commission. In the end, the governor got the Legislature to agree to a package of ethics reforms far less ambitious than those the commission had recommended-- a result Mr. Cuomo hailed as proof of the panel’s success....Mr. Cuomo said early on that the commission would be “totally independent” and free to pursue wrongdoing anywhere in state government, including in his own office. “Anything they want to look at, they can look at-- me, the lieutenant governor, the attorney general, the comptroller, any senator, any assemblyman,” he said last August....Yet, The Times found that the governor’s office interfered with the commission when it was looking into groups that were politically close to him. In fact, the commission never tried to investigate his administration.Beyond that, Mr. Cuomo’s office said, the commission needed the governor’s guiding hand because it was, simply, a mess: Its staff was plagued by “relationship issues” and was “mired in discord.” The commissioners, whom he earlier called some of New York’s sharpest governmental and legal minds, “did not understand the budget or legislative process or how state government worked,” the statement said. Their subpoenas often had “no logic or basis,” and those that touched on the governor’s supporters were more for show than for legitimate investigative purposes, the statement said.
Cuomo has put himself forward as the natural candidate of the Republican wing of the Democratic Party if Hillary stumbles or decides not to run. What a cruel ending of the already frayed relationship between progressives and the Democratic Party that would be!UPDATEAnd Rachel Maddow takes a swing at the developing scandal:
