The fish rot, the ocean stinks
Some stuff that doesn’t get you sent to prison if you’re a political power player in New York in 2017, where the name of the game might as well be My Little Crony now that friendship is magic and bribe-takers have little to fear even when bribe-makers go down:
l Your scheme steering public money as the state’s most powerful lawmaker to a rare-cancer doctor who then refers patients to a law firm that in turn puts millions of dollars back in your pockets. None of which stops you from using your taxpayerprovided per diem to have assignations at Albany’s cheapest motels with both one of the lawmakers in your caucus and with your former staffer turned big-time lobbyist thanks to her direct line to you.
l Getting caught on wiretaps where your thuggish, moronic son complains about how the feds are always listening in. This being the son who threatened to beat up his boss at the no-show job you got him, and who endlessly tried to make more bucks from your position as the state’s second most powerful lawmaker down to calling people on Christmas Day to curse at them: “Every time you call me, you see my father’s name in the paper, right?”
l Dumping $20 million of your members’ retirement funds into a collapsing Ponzi scheme disguised as a hedge fund in exchange for $60,000 stuffed in a Ferragamo bag personally delivered by a guy who’s pled guilty to bribing the mayor of New York and also to dressing up as an elf to bring pricey Christmas gifts to the wives and kids of the same NYPD leaders who he was providing prostitutes for on their private flights to big football games.
The guy who collected that man purse managed to hang his jury Thursday. This is our sad new norm, as in Norman Seabrook, who the feds say they intend to retry but who’s meantime claiming redemption and vowing to eventually return and again lead the jail guard union whose members he’s accused of stealing from.
The first two, of course, are former Assembly Speaker Shelly Silver and state Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos, who were two of Albany’s notorious three men in a room until they were both indicted in 2015. Both now face new trials after their convictions were overturned this year thanks to the Supreme Court’s infamous McDonnell decision, which came last year following their trials.
That’s former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, who had a friend — who doesn’t? — who liked to fly him around and buy him Rolexes and take his wife on $20,000 shopping trips and lend him $50,000. And that friend got nice things from McDonnell, like having the launch party for his dietary supplement business at the governor’s mansion.
Which takes us across the Hudson, where on the same day last week that Seabrook’s jury hung, so did the one considering the case of Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey, whose wealthy doctor friend liked to give him things like private flights to the Dominican Republic and fancy hotel rooms in Paris. Menendez in turn used his office to do favors including personally calling U.S. ambassadors to help the doctor’s college-age girlfriends get U.S. visas.
Ten of the 12 jurors reportedly saw no crime there, just — to borrow a line from Silver’s lawyer — “the fact that friends might do favors for friends.”
As The News wrote Friday: “It is becoming all but impossible to send officials to prison for bribery.”
More, the guys getting off so far knew they were taking their chances. The ones prosecutors will eye going forward know that if you don’t go around talking like young Skelos — “I will do this f---ing official act because you are giving me this f---ing money” — there’s nothing to fear.
One hopeful note: A new bill in the House would expand the definition of an official act so it covers the things elected officials actually do, and closes the gaping loophole the Supreme Court opened.
“In many of these cases, there’s no question the elected official received payments. The problem is that what they did in return for them is not an official act now,” said Rep. Tom Suozzi, a Democrat who co-sponsored the bill with Republican Brian Fitzpatrick. “We need to define them that way so you can show the quid pro quo.
“If the official act is to make a phone call or set up a meeting, that’s not a bad thing. It’s when you get paid by someone to do that, when you get a watch or a house or a vacation — that’s what wrong. That’s the bad part.”