Cuomo Under Investigation?

[ELMER J. FUDD]

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/05/06/nyregion/us-said-to-seek-records-from-anticorruption-panels-members.html?_r=0&referrer=

I'm surprised there hasn't been much on this here.

U.S. Said to Seek Records From Anticorruption Panel’s Members

By WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM and SUSANNE CRAIG

May 6, 2014

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan have issued a grand jury subpoena seeking emails, text messages and other records from all the members of the anticorruption commission that Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo abruptly shut down in March, three people briefed on the matter said on Monday.

The action by prosecutors from the office of Preet Bharara, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, comes just weeks after he took the unusual step of publicly criticizing the governor’s shutdown of the panel and took possession of its investigative files.

The subpoena, which was served on the commission’s former counsel, Kelly Donovan, seeks documents pertaining to the formation of the panel, known as a Moreland Commission, based on the 1907 Moreland Act. It also sought documents about how the panel was run, overseen and closed, according to the people briefed on the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the investigation publicly.

The issuance of the subpoena, and new details about recent meetings of several Moreland Commission employees and prosecutors in Mr. Bharara’s office, provided the strongest suggestion to date that the criminal investigation may be examining allegations of interference with the commission.

It was unclear what potential crimes were being investigated and whose conduct was being examined. A spokesman for Mr. Bharara’s office, James M. Margolin, would confirm neither that a subpoena had been issued nor that a criminal investigation was underway.

The subpoena was sent to Ms. Donovan, who had been seconded to the Moreland Commission from her post as executive deputy attorney general for criminal justice, and returned to that job after the commission was shut down. As the commission’s former lawyer, she was sent the subpoena with the expectation that she would notify the panel’s former members that their correspondence and other documents were being sought, one of the people said.

The subpoena also asks for a host of other material previously turned over voluntarily by the commission, these people said.

Matthew Wing, a spokesman for Mr. Cuomo, would not discuss the suggestion that federal prosecutors were examining possible interference by his administration. In an email, Mr. Wing said, “The Moreland Commission was clear at the conclusion that they were referring all cases to various prosecutors — to the extent the U.S. attorney wants to investigate those cases we encourage all state offices to cooperate.”

Last month, Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, dismissed suggestions that there could have been anything wrong in his office’s interfering with the commission’s investigations. “It’s my commission. I can’t ‘interfere’ with it, because it is mine. It is controlled by me,” he said last month, according to Crain’s New York Business.

Mr. Cuomo set up the panel, formally known as the Commission to Investigate Public Corruption, in July with great fanfare. But he disclosed on March 29 that he was disbanding it in exchange for the Legislature’s agreement to pass what he called strengthened ethics laws as part of the adoption of a new state budget.

Five days later, Mr. Bharara wrote to the panel’s two chairmen and senior staff members, sharply questioning the decision. Mr. Bharara suggested that Mr. Cuomo had abandoned his commitment to fight corruption, trading it for the short-term political gain of the budget deal.

On April 10, Mr. Bharara and the commission’s chairmen reached an agreement under which his prosecutors took possession of all of the panel’s documents and computer files, including materials its staff had developed in several corruption investigations, some focused on state legislators.

Since then, federal prosecutors from Mr. Bharara’s public corruption unit, led by Arlo Devlin-Brown, an assistant United States attorney, have been working on two main issues.

One avenue is a focus on following up on the investigations that were interrupted by the commission’s shutdown. Prosecutors have met with the commission’s former staff — some of them former prosecutors themselves — in preparation for taking up the unfinished investigations, according to several people briefed on the meetings.

Federal prosecutors also appear to be examining any actions that may have interfered with the panel’s operation. Prosecutors have asked the panel’s investigators and staff members about allegations of interference by Cuomo administration officials, including the governor’s top aides and his senior appointees to the panel, the people said.

Much of the questioning, several of the people said, has focused on the conduct of the commission’s executive director, Regina Calcaterra, who, they said, had repeatedly sought to prevent commission subpoenas that might reflect poorly on the governor from being issued and tried to divert investigators from focusing on his allies.

When federal prosecutors took possession of the commission’s documents and computers, they also collected the BlackBerry smartphones the commission had provided to its staff, the people said. In the commission’s early days, senior members of its staff were told to communicate with Mr. Cuomo’s aides only via BlackBerry PIN messages, not recorded on government servers.

Mr. Wing defended the use of PIN messages as “a common way that many people communicate in 2014.”

[Doc]

What? Someone with the gall to investigate the king? How dare they?

 

I only want to hear good actual results of his removal from office. This scum-bag is slipperier than snot on a door knob. But it is good to know that someone is after him.

[Culvercreek hunt club]

What? Someone with the gall to investigate the king? How dare they?

 

I only want to hear good actual results of his removal from office. This scum-bag is slipperier than snot on a door knob. But it is good to know that someone is after him.

“It’s my commission. I can’t ‘interfere’ with it, because it is mine. It is controlled by me,” he said last month

 

About says everything one needs to know about his attitude of serving the People of the State of NY.

[ants]

“It’s my commission. I can’t ‘interfere’ with it, because it is mine. It is controlled by me,” he said last month

 

About says everything one needs to know about his attitude of serving the People of the State of NY.

 

His attitude about serving the people of NY is "Im the King so F- You"

[Five Seasons]

sounds like something that would be front page news if he was a repub.

[bubba]

Front page news is Astorino is a racist and they want to oust him form his job in westchester county.

[landtracdeerhunter]

Well Well, and all the tv money spent on anti corruption ads.  Open mouth, insert foot.is.

 

Thank you Mr. Fudd, for posting this.

Edited May 9, 2014 by landtracdeerhunter