Vance-tied firm got big contract
MANHATTAN District Attorney Cy Vance Jr.’s office has paid nearly $550,000 to a security firm with close ties to him and his political campaigns to work with its public corruption unit, the Daily News has learned.
K2 Intelligence, a firm founded by comedian Nick Kroll’s father and brother, got a contract over a year and a half go to teach the DA’s unit how to use sophisticated data-mining software that the CIA and the National Security Agency use as a counterterrorism tool.
K2 started getting paid in December 2015 and most recently received a $38,562 check for its services with the unit two months ago, according to records received from a Freedom of Information Law request. The firm is now working with the DA’s rackets bureau.
Current K2 executives have donated at least $23,485 to Vance’s campaigns, state records show.
One of the company’s biggest donors is Thomas Thacher, a longtime friend of Vance who served on the DA’s transition team when he won office in 2009. Thacher ran his own firm, Thacher Associates, that specialized in corporate monitoring to prevent wrongdoing at businesses. K2 purchased his firm in 2012 and made him an executive.
Thacher’s father was a partner at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, the law firm where Vance’s dad spent most of his legal career.
Thacher has contributed $20,985 to Vance’s campaigns since 2008, according to state records. He gave $5,000 in May.
Records show that Jeremy Kroll, one of K2’s co-founders, made a $1,000 contribution to Vance in 2016. Jordan Arnold, a K2 executive who worked as a prosecutor in the DA’s office until January 2016, also gave $1,500 to Vance’s campaign in the past two years.
Another K2 executive, Martin Aronchick, served on Vance’s transition team.
Linda Fairstein, the former chief of the Manhattan DA’s sex crimes unit and close confidant to Vance, also served as a senior adviser to K2 from 2013 to 2014. State records show she has donated $27,306.34 to Vance’s campaign since 2008.
The DA’s office said that favoritism did not play a role in contracting with K2. It said the firm was chosen because of its expertise in Palantir, a powerful data-analytics program used by several law enforcement and intelligence agencies.
K2 had done similar work for the Moreland Commission, the state ethics panel that had looked into corruption until it abruptly shut down in March 2014. K2 used Palantir to detect patterns among campaign contributions, legislative bills, lobbying records and other data.
“This office subsequently retained K2 to create a similar data set for our corruption investigations, precisely because of the enormous volume of work they had already done in this area, as well as their specific knowledge of and access to this data,” Manhattan DA spokeswoman Joan Vollero said. “The hiring conformed with all applicable legal and ethical rules.”
Dick Dadey, executive director of good-government group Citizens Union, said that Vance should have been upfront about his ties to K2 rather than let it come out through a Freedom of Information request.
“By not divulging, it gives the false impression that there is something troublesome to hide,” he said. “The fact that the DA’s office and this firm are working on public corruption, they know all too well the need for transparency and accountability to fight corruption.”