NY’s SAFE Act architect charged with influence pedaling
The Democrat Speaker of the New York State legislature, Sheldon Silver, has been arrested for his participation in a bribery and kickback scheme according to the Daily News.
A complaint of 5 counts accuse him of accepting millions of dollars in exchange for his influence in Albany. Silver has been the Speaker for more than two decades and he’s been party to every piece of legislation to come out of that body, including the gun control SAFE Act that passed in the middle of the night while New Yorkers slept.
“For many years, New Yorkers have asked the question, ‘How could Speaker Silver, one of the most powerful men in New York, earn millions of dollars in outside income without deeply compromising his ability to honestly serve his constituents?’” said [U.S. Attorney Preet Bhahara].
“Today we provide the answer: He didn’t.”
[…]
“Speaker Silver lied and misled the public about his outside incomes,” U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara told a news conference hours after Silver turned himself in.
“These charges go to the very core of what ails Albany — a lack of transparency, lack of accountability and a lack of principle joined with an overabundance of greed, cronyism and self-dealing.”
Last year, Legacy Governor Andrew Cuomo put the kibosh on an investigation into corruption in Albany when investigators got a little too close to Silver’s antics, but the investigation continued without the governor’s approval.
Authorities also charged that the corrupt Silver attempted to cover his tracks once a state investigation was launched in 2013, moving to quash a subpoena from the Moreland Commission to Weitz & Luxenberg.
Silver dismissed the investigation as a “fishing expedition.” The assembly speaker and his staff were involved in negotiations that led Gov. Cuomo to end the commission last year, the complaint said.
[…]
Gov. Cuomo created the commission in 2013, but abruptly ended its work last year when the Legislature agreed to ethics reforms.
New york should take a closer look at everything these creatures have done in the last few years – including and most importantly, the SAFE Act.
Category: Politics
These are Nooh Yawk liberals, I’m certain Silver only got caught because he pi$$ed off the wrong senior politician!
My understanding is that Silver was THE senior politician, in the NY State government. I’m guessing it would have taken more than one person up in Albany to knife him in the back like this. The longer you sit on that throne….
Maybe it was someone from below trying to knife him out of the way?
Skeleos, Coumo and Silver are the three senior officials in Albany/New York State. When Coumo disbanded the Moreland Commission which was supposed to root out corruption in the Sate government, the Federal DOJ continued the investigation. The goofy Lt. Governor was on TV last night claiming the legislature will not be able to function and will not get a budget on time. HaHa. She couldn’t run the Motor Vehicle Bureau or get re-elected to congress for a full term either which should make her an expert on dysfunction.
*SHOCKED FACE!*
I lived in New York in the early 60s and this was going on then just a smaller version of national politics.
No one should be surprised by this. Political corruption has a long, deep history in New York – all the way back to Boss Tweed and the pre-Civil War days of Tammany Hall.
I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader to figure out what political party owned Tammany Hall.
“Silver dismissed the investigation as a “fishing expedition.” Oh course he would say that! But several million bucks is hard to hide. Wonder how he got that past the IRS? Don’t answer that. And without doubt the the State’s biggest insider crony of them all, Cuomo pulls the old, “I got a sound good solution to a feel good issue”, with what he believed would be a quiet, do nothing, all reports on his desk first, investigation. Only to find the investigators had a bit more depth of information than he expected they would have and when confronted with the truth before them, the investigators either 1. did the right thing or 2. said, “Hey, no way in hell’s my head going on the chopping block for this dip shit, screw him! This shit won’t wash and when it comes to light we’ll be crucified, indicted, charged and do time for a coverup!” I’ll choose the latter.
A crooked politician? Who’da thunk it?
Cut Sheldon into little bits.
Thirty pieces of Silver.
There are many people in state legislatures and in Congress who came in on a bike and rode out in a limo. It is amazing how many of these people or their spouses miraculously became wise investors after a few years in office. It’s uncanny how many of these critters had little or no real estate background and yet managed to make fortunes in real estate deals. I tell you, it’s the strangest series of coincidences I have ever known.
Of course, DeBlasio still supports him.
Yeah. This is my shocked face.
I guess this guy was right when he described the passing of the SAFE act as a “mafia style sit down”.