Cash add-Vance
BY THE TIME Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. met with the lawyer representing Mayor de Blasio in his yearold campaign finance probe of Hizzoner, the attorney’s firm and its partners had donated $70,000 to the top prosecutor.
But unlike Vance’s decision to return the donation of a lawyer representing Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr. to avoid a conflict of interest, the DA kept the contributions from Kramer Levin Naftalis, the firm representing the mayor.
These donations by a law firm handling one of the DA’s most high-profile cases are yet another example of potential conflicts of interest that have dogged the DA in the last two weeks — scrutiny that prompted Vance to announce Sunday that he was suspending fund-raising.
In a letter to the Daily News, Vance — who is being opposed by only two write-in candidates in his bid for reelection — wrote that he wouldn’t accept “a single dollar more" until the nonpartisan watchdog Center for the Advancement of Public Integrity reviews his fund-raising tactics.
On Friday, when asked about the Kramer Levin donations, Vance seemed to draw a distinction between accepting campaign cash from a lawyer personally involved in an ongoing case and their law firm or fellow partners.
Records show that Vance has accepted at least $178,000 over the last four years from law firms that regularly do criminal defense work in the city, including the representation of clients who have matters involving the Manhattan DA.
This is legal and all the DAs — as well as the state attorney general— do the same thing.
Since 2009, when Vance first ran for office, Kramer Levin as a firm has regularly written checks to Vance’s campaigns. Mayor de Blasio’s lawyer, Barry Berke, only donated $500 in 2009, but checks from Berke’s fellow Kramer Levin partner, John Coffey, have totaled $57,000. Kramer Levin to handle Vance’s
The most recent check from investigation on May 5, 2016 — Coffey to Vance, dated Aug. 23, just nine months after Vance last 2015, was for $10,000. At the accepted a check from Kramer time, Vance was not yet investigating Levin’s Coffey. de Blasio. Though it was public knowledge
But four months later, on Jan. that a Kramer Levin lawyer 4, 2016, a state Board of Elections was now directly involved in a investigator forwarded to Vance investigation on behalf of Vance the results of her examination the mayor, Vance kept all of the of de Blasio’s failed effort Kramer Levin checks. to swing control of the state Senate His team looked at another from Republicans to Democrats. contribution in a very different way — this one a $25,000 check
De Blasio solicited hundreds from the Trumps’ attorney, of thousands of dollars from individuals Marc Kasowitz, donated to and entities seeking favorable Vance’s campaign in January treatment from his administration, 2012. steering the At the time, Vance was investigating checks to upstate Democratic allegations that Ivanka committees. This enabled donations Trump and Donald Trump Jr. far in excess of what an individual misled investors about the pace is legally allowed to contribute. of sales in a Trump hotel-condo in SoHo that later failed.
The investigator, Risa Sugarman, In May 2012, Trump’s lawyer, had concluded that de Blasio Kasowitz, requested a meeting and his surrogates concocted with Vance. At that point, this scheme to deliberately Vance’s team red-flagged the donation evade rules limiting how much a made five months earlier donor can give to a candidate. and ordered the campaign to return Vance opened an investigation. it to Kasowitz.
De Blasio announced publicly Around May 2013, Vance decided that he’d retained Berke of not to prosecute the