Objection!
Sleaze pols pay att’ys $7M in elex cash
ALBANY — The explosion of Capitol corruption scandals in recent years has turned a bunch of campaign accounts into legal defense funds.
Twenty elected officials since 2004 spent a combined $6.78 million on legal fees related to criminal and ethical investigations against them, a Daily News/New York Public Interest Research Group analysis shows.
The list has included some of the most powerful elected officials in Albany, including former Gov. David Paterson, convicted former Controller Alan Hevesi, former Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and pervy Assemblyman Vito Lopez.
In the past two years alone, state lawmakers spent nearly $2 million in campaign funds on legal fees, led by the $1.5 million paid by former state Sen. Carl Kruger. He’s serving seven years in federal prison after pleading guilty in 2011 to bribery and other corruption charges.
The Brooklyn Dem isn’t the only member of the million-dollar legal fees club.
Bruno spent $1.5 million in campaign money to fight a federal corruption case that is still ongoing. And Paterson coughed up just under $1.1 million for several criminal and ethical probes, including his intervention into a domestic violence case against a top aide and his acceptance of free World Series tickets.
Paterson ultimately was slapped with a record $62,125 fine for violating state ethics law.
Silver most recently spent $40,000 in campaign donations on legal fees tied to investigations into his role in a $103,000 secret settlement with two women who accused Lopez of sexual harassment. He has not been charged with wrongdoing.
Lopez shelled out more than $276,000.
Sen. Malcolm Smith, the Queens Democrat recently busted for trying to bribe his way onto the New York City Republican mayoral line, spent $50,000 on unrelated investigations.
The state Board of Elections in a 1989 formal opinion ruled the use of campaign cash for law- yer bills is legal if the investigations are related to someone’s office or campaign.
Some lawmakers and government reformers say that needs to change.
“This money is designed to help candidates run for office, not to help them evade punishment for illegal activity,” said NYPIRG researcher Bill Mahoney.
Senate Democratic Conference Leader Andrea StewartCousins found the $6.78 million figure “startling.”
Senate Democrats this week proposed a campaign finance reform bill to restrict how donations can be spent, including banning their use for legal fees.
“It’s important we restore the public trust,” Stewart-Cousins said.
But one of Kruger’s lawyers, Benjamin Brafman, called the use of campaign cash on legal fees “perfectly appropriate.”
“The difficulty in being in public office today is it’s fairly easy to violate some of the laws that are being used to prosecute these people,” Brafman said. “As a consequence, some people may very well not be guilty, and it would be impossible for them to defend
themselves.”