Losing gorilla war

Big-bully Dean is doomed fur sure

IN THE Albany jungle, Dean Skelos was one big gorilla.

How’s this for beating your chest: He was once caught on a wiretap boasting, “I’m gonna be majority leader, I’m going to control everything, I’m going to control who gets on what committees, what legislation goes to the floor, what legislation comes through committees, the budget, everything.”

So what if Dean never explicitly threatened the companies that he was shaking down?

He didn’t have to: It was just like the poem, “Gorilla,” in the Shel Silverstein children’s book “Where the Sidewalk Ends,” said federal prosecutor Jason Masimore Wednesday during his closing arguments in Dean and his son Adam’s corruption trial.

The poem, Masimore explained, is about a little kid who says, “Ever since I started bringing my gorilla to school, everyone is being really nice to me.”

The other kids, the teachers, everybody: “They’re all afraid the gorilla is gonna rip their arms off,” Masimore said. “The gorilla in this case is the power of the Senate majority leader.”

The insurance firm PRI and the realestate firm Glenwood Management both needed Skelos to push through bills that regularly need renewing. Execs from both companies testified that without these laws being reupped, their business models were dead. And the execs testified how Dean repeatedly badgered them to “help out” his swaggering punk of a son Adam with payoffs.

Dean Skelos’ lawyer, G. Robert Gage, and Adam’s, Christopher Conniff, did their best, but their best was raving gibberish.

They fussed over irrelevant details and time lags (in Albany politics, sometimes even extortion payments take months to process).

They tried to sell the idea that both Glenwood’s star witness and PRI’s, both of whom testified under immunity about the Skelos shakedowns, were not only lying to save their necks but had somehow managed to go back through time to make emails and phone calls going back years jibe with their testimony.

“It doesn’t add up,” said Gage at closing arguments for his doomed client.

“It doesn’t add up,” repeated Conniff, summing up the case against the filial felons.

These guys must have gone into law because they failed math. The case against the Skeloses is about as hard to figure as two plus two.

In his part of the closing argument, assistant US Attorney Rahul Mukhi divided the case into three schemes and gave six separate reasons why the Skeloses were guilty in each of them.

That made for 18 bars that formed a logical cage around the Skeloses — soon to be replaced by a real one.

Why did Adam Skelos threaten his boss at the insurance firm PRI, “Talk to me like that again and I’m going to smash you’re fking head in”? Simple: Adam knew PRI’s head was scared of his daddy.

“Right now, we are in dangerous times, Adam,” Dean said on a wiretapped phone call to his son after the indictment of former Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver last winter.

“What were they worried about?” asked Masimore.

“This moment, right now . . .a time when all of their schemes would be laid bare.”

The Skeloses had their run of the jungle for a while. But even King Kong fell in the end. Fell right off that building that he ruled, for a while — the one named after the Empire State.

How do you defend the indefensible? If you’re former state Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos, you do the same as your Assembly counterpart, Sheldon Silver: You don’t.

Like Silver, Skelos opted not to testify on his own behalf — likely realizing the jury wouldn’t believe a word.

No, this was the gist of the closing argument from Skelos’ lawyer Wednesday: What the prosecution calls bribery, extortion and conspiracy was just business as usual — in a system everybody recognizes as corrupt.

It plainly is the way of Albany — but the public’s general awareness of corruption doesn’t make it legal.

Prosecutors nailed down example after example of Dean using his power to shake down companies to fill Adam’s pockets — $20,000 for a fake titlereferral fee; $78,000 for a noshow job with Physicians Recipro cal Insurers, a $10Kamonth raise at another job with environmental company Abtech.

Abtech’s CEO cried he felt “held hostage” by the Skeloses.

Oh, the defense also played the Concerned Dad card — arguing, basically, that Dean steered work Adam’s way because that was the only way the noaccount son could get by.

Probably true — but, as prosecutor Rahul Mukhi said, “You cannot commit a crime and then just say, ‘I’m not guilty because I did it to help my son.’ ”

Indeed, tons of New York corruption involves elected officials using their positions to enrich family and friends.

The particular scams in the Silver and Skelos cases may differ, but the payoffsforpower pattern is plainly the Albany way.

If he keeps this up, US Attorney Preet Bharara can look at opening a probe of the whole Legislature under the racketeering laws.