Micah Morrison

Sheldon Silver, the powerful former speaker of the New York State Assembly, went down last week—again—on corruption charges. Silver was convicted in 2015 of pocketing nearly $4 million in kickbacks and bribes, but the verdict was overturned in 2016 after the Supreme Court’s McDonnell decision narrowed the legal definition of public corruption. Prosecutors, said McDonnell, must show a quid-pro-quo “official action” to prove honest services fraud. Actions such as “setting up a meeting, talking to another official, or organizing an event” would not cut it, the court ruled. “To qualify as an ‘official act,’ the public official must make a decision or take an action on that question or matter, or agree to do so.” Much handwringing followed the decision, including from these quarters, saying that the Court had set the bar too high. Those concerns seemed justified last year when Senator Robert Menendez beat a corruption rap in part due to McDonnell.

But in the Silver case, prosecutors got it right. And in doing so, they set a new standard for prosecuting public corruption. Not only were they able to demonstrate clear quid-pro-quos, satisfying McDonnell, but they appeared to draw two other valuable lessons from mistakes in the Menendez case: keep it short, and keep it simple. Menendez rambled on for more than two months and featured a globe-trotting cast of colorful characters, some of whom had little relation to the matters at hand. The first Silver case ran for a month. The second was over in two weeks. Key witnesses quickly made their points and were gone.

The Silver case revolved around two corrupt schemes. In one, Silver steered cancer research funds to a prominent doctor, who in turn referred lucrative mesothelioma cases to a Silver-aligned law firm, which kicked back more than $3 million to the assembly speaker. In the second scheme, Silver promoted favorable tax legislation for real-estate developers. The developers paid a lawyer handsomely for the tax relief, and the lawyer funneled a cut to his old friend, Silver.

It’s hard to shake the notion that in New York, all this is viewed as business as usual. Where’s the outrage? Silver is one rodent in a long line of rats. The former assembly speaker was one of the infamous “three men in a room” who control New York State government in Albany. The other two are the majority leader of the state Senate, and the governor. The former majority leader, Dean Skelos, also got a McDonnell pass after his 2015 corruption conviction and will be retried in June. A former aide to Governor Andrew Cuomo was convicted in March of pocketing more than $300,000 in bribe schemes. Other allies of the governor will go on trial in June in a bid-rigging case involving billions in state funds. The governor, lest we forget, shut down his own corruption commission. In July, the former leader of the New York City corrections officers’ union faces retrial on bribery charges. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is beset by corruption allegations. A sweeping graft case has rocked the NYPD. And the attorney general of the state has been forced to resign and is under investigation for assaulting four women.

McDonnell and Silver remind us that the law is a living thing, shape-shifting through the courts to chase humankind’s ageless propensity to evil. Who is winning the race these days? On that, in New York, the jury is out.

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Micah Morrison is chief investigative reporter for Judicial Watch. Follow him on Twitter @micah_morrison. Tips: mmorrison@judicialwatch.org

Investigative Bulletin is published by Judicial Watch. Reprints and media inquiries: jfarrell@judicialwatch.org

The summons from Chelsea Clinton came via email, an invitation to “be the change.”

“I am so excited about the Clinton Global Initiative University,” Chelsea wrote. In October, student leaders from “CGI U” will converge on Chicago, working on “projects big and small to address climate change, poverty, gender inequality, and other pressing issues facing their generation — and all of us.” The email provided four opportunities to donate to the Clinton Foundation. “None of this great work would be possible without you and your continued support.”

In January 2017, the New York State Labor Department issued a statutory notice that the Clinton Global Initiative—the annual glitterati schmooze fest that brought hundreds of millions of dollars into Clinton coffers—would be laying off twenty-two employees. The news went out: CGI was dead. Hillary would not be president; the gravy train had run out of steam. The Clintons closed up shop.

But in fact, reports of the death of the Clinton Global Initiative were greatly exaggerated. It continues in a kind of zombie afterlife, along with other Clinton Foundation efforts, including CGI U. “Building on the successful model of the Clinton Global Initiative,” the Clinton Foundation website says, “President Clinton launched the Clinton Global Initiative University in 2007 to engage the next generation of leaders on college campuses around the world.”

Mr. Clinton made a fortune from CGI U. His early partner in the project was the for-profit university system, Laureate Education. Laureate donated between $1 million and $5 million to the Clinton Foundation and signed Mr. Clinton up as “honorary chancellor” in 2010. Over the next five years, Laureate paid Mr. Clinton more than $17 million. That’s when Mrs. Clinton was secretary of state and gearing up her presidential run. Laureate was controlled Doug Becker, a big Democratic donor. Becker stepped aside as CEO in 2017 with a $23 million package after taking the company public.

What does an honorary chancellor do to earn $17 million? Laureate told CNN that Mr. Clinton “inspired” people. The State Department stonewalled Judicial Watch’s attempt to uncover more details, eventually producing a heavily redacted contract that blacked out descriptions of the former president’s role. Laureate lately seems to have been shoved down the memory hole—it does not appear in current CGI U promotional material and both the Clinton Foundation and Laureate did not respond to requests for clarification. But Chelsea Clinton is carrying on the work. “We’re here with one of the most remarkable world leaders,” a Laureate student said in a video interview at a CGI U event reported by the Washington Post. “We’re here with Chelsea Clinton.”

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Micah Morrison is chief investigative reporter for Judicial Watch. Follow him on Twitter @micah_morrison. Tips: mmorrison@judicialwatch.org

Investigative Bulletin is published by Judicial Watch. Reprints and media inquiries: jfarrell@judicialwatch.org

In 2011, then-New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg got himself in hot water when he declared “I have my own army in the NYPD, which is the seventh biggest army in the world.”

It was not—not the seventh biggest and not an army—but Bloomberg was not far off the mark. With a current uniformed strength of about 36,000 and powerful unions, the New York Police Department is a profound force in the city, from the streets to the suites and in the corridors of political power. It has shaped the national and even international imagination in countless books, movies and television shows. The mayor rightfully exercises civilian control over the department and to varying degrees, and with varying success, police commissioners rightfully have struggled to keep the NYPD from being bent too far to the political will of the city’s top elected official.

That drama is being played out again today. Mayor Bill de Blasio, his eyes on higher national office, is wrapping his political machine around New York law enforcement, locking down avenues of transparency and independence that could cause him trouble. The mayor cloaks his moves in the progressive politics of his base but no one is fooled. This is about Iowa and New Hampshire and the kind of raw political power that de Blasio needs to exercise to keep his long-shot presidential hopes alive.

The mayor visited Iowa in December, insisting he was not running for president. His wife, Chirlane McCray, was in New Hampshire earlier this month. The New York Times recently noted that Ms. McCray “suddenly seems to be everywhere… [she] has stepped up her out-of-town travel, meeting with political leaders, speaking about her signature mental health initiative, networking and building the family brand outside New York City.”

In March, de Blasio installed a top political aide, Phillip Walzak, as NYPD spokesman, with the rank of deputy commissioner. Walzak was communications director for de Blasio’s successful 2013 mayoral run, a key City Hall aide, and helped run the mayor’s 2017 re-election campaign. New York’s police unions immediately denounced the appointment. “This is the clearest sign yet that the de Blasio administration thinks the NYPD’s primary mission is to serve as a political tool, not to protect the public safety of all New Yorkers,” said Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association President Patrick Lynch.

“With the mayor’s former campaign manager now overseeing information given to the press,” Lynch added, “…how can either police officers or the public have any confidence that it will be dispensed with an eye toward public safety and justice and not filtered through a purely political lens?”

Police Commissioner James O’Neill is an NYPD insider appointed by de Blasio. “When Jim O’Neill became police commissioner in 2016, he was known as a ‘cop’s cop,’” noted the influential police-affairs columnist Len Levitt. “With his recent appointment of Phillip Walzak as the NYPD’s Deputy Commissioner of Public Information, he seems more like the mayor’s cop.”

The New York Post reported that several of O’Neill’s top aides opposed Walzak when rumors of the appointment first surfaced. And the head of another police union, Ed Mullins of the Sergeants Benevolent Association, told the Post that of the “many highly talented media personalities in the selection pool, it seems the Commissioner expects us all to believe the Mayor’s office had the best people. I guess we’ll see if the NYPD’s communications are separate from City Hall.”

De Blasio and O’Neill have triggered unease in police ranks with a sweeping series of high-level changes and forced retirements mainly aimed at instituting the mayor’s signature “neighborhood policing” concept. We have been to neighborhood policing dance before. The police seek stronger ties with communities to lower crime. “While neighborhood policing may be a terrific concept,” Levitt wrote, “there have been problems with its implementation that neither de Blasio or O’Neill have publicly acknowledged.” One of the problems, Levitt notes elsewhere, is a “behind-the-scenes battle” raging at the NYPD over the policy’s effectiveness and rollout.

Earlier this month, the mayor struck again, issuing an executive order limiting the power of the city’s independent-minded Department of Investigations. The issue at hand involved department commissioner Mark Peters’ control of a special unit policing corruption in New York’s vast education system. But the Post reportedthat the real reason for the executive order was that Peters, a former de Blasio ally, had issued “a series of scathing reports…against various city agencies, including the Housing Authority.”

The head of the City Council’s investigations committee—fellow Democrat Ritchie Torres—denounced the de Blasio move as “an insidious power grab” and “part of an orchestrated campaign to remove the DOI commissioner.”  Torres told the Post, “if disempowering the agency that investigates you fails to constitute a conflict of interest—let alone an abuse of power—then I’m not sure what does.”

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Micah Morrison is chief investigative reporter for Judicial Watch. Follow him on Twitter @micah_morrison. Tips: mmorrison@judicialwatch.org

Investigative Bulletin is published by Judicial Watch. Reprints and media inquiries: jfarrell@judicialwatch.org

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has been slowly sinking in his own personal purgatory lately, beset by the corruption trial of a former close aide and a primary challenge from the Left by actress Cynthia Nixon. Things got worse last week when news emerged that a Cuomo-appointed parole board was freeing cop killer Herman Bell.

The news sent a shock wave across New York. Bell was one of three members of the radical Black Liberation Army responsible for the brutal 1971 slaughter of two New York City police officers, Joseph Piagentini and Waverly Jones. Judicial Watch told the story when Bell came up for parole in 2014. Piagentini and Jones were ambushed at a housing project in Harlem, lured there by a fake 911 call. (Readers of Investigative Bulletin will recall a fake call, a year later, lured NYPD Patrolman Phillip Cardillo to his death in Harlem.) Jones died immediately in a hail of gunfire. Piagentini took longer to die, pleading with his killers that he had a wife and daughters at home. They showed him no mercy, firing twenty-two bullets into his body.

Justice caught up with Herman Bell in 1973 and he has been in prison ever since. For decades, he insisted he was innocent. His story began to change only when it became obvious that he would never escape prison without accepting responsibility for his crimes. But as late as a 2012 appearance before the parole board, he still insisted he was “a political prisoner.”

In an appearance before the parole board this year, Bell took a different position. “There was nothing political about the act, as much as I thought at the time,” he said. “It was murder and horribly wrong.”

Bell will walk free in April and there appears to be little anyone can do about it. Political leaders and police unions have bitterly protested the move, aiming much of their wrath at Cuomo. The governor claims he is powerless to reverse the parole board’s decision. But Cuomo’s appointees, noted the New York Post, “have been much more parole-friendly than their Republican-appointed predecessors.” That’s an outrage. And it’s contributing to Cuomo’s deepening electoral problems.

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Micah Morrison is chief investigative reporter for Judicial Watch. Follow him on Twitter @micah_morrison. Tips: mmorrison@judicialwatch.org

Investigative Bulletin is published by Judicial Watch. Reprints and media inquiries: jfarrell@judicialwatch.org

Cardillo FOIL Case Update

Courtroom action opened Tuesday in Judicial Watch’s Freedom of Information Law lawsuit against the NYPD in New York State Supreme Court. Under state FOIL laws, Judicial Watch sought records, a final report and a key audio tape of a 10-13 “officer in distress” call made in the 46-year-old Phillip Cardillo murder case. The NYPD told Judicial Watch to go to hell.

Instead, we went to court.

Cardillo, an NYPD patrolman, was gunned down in a Nation of Islam mosque in Harlem in 1972. The NYPD claims the Cardillo case, after more than four decades, is still “active and ongoing.”

Judicial Watch argued that, on both the facts and the law, the case is closed, and that the public has a right to the information.

Judge Verna Saunders is presiding in the case. Despite a late shift of the lawsuit to her courtroom, she was well-prepared, asking sharp questions of both sides on the facts and the law.

The NYPD took an absolutist position on the Judicial Watch request—absolutely not. Judge Saunders inquired, might the NYPD be open to providing redacted documents? The NYPD lawyer side-stepped the question.

Might the NYPD, which claims it cannot find the 10-13 tape, turn it over if discovered on a further search? No, replied the NYPD, because the tape was part of an active and ongoing investigation.

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