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| Queens Sen. Malcolm Smith, handcuffs not visible |
The 56 year old Smith started in politics as a senior aide, a protégé, of outrageously corrupt (and conservative) Queens Congressman Floyd Flake. Before being driven from office, under indictment for corruption, Flake, representing one of the most liberal areas in the country, worked for the election of right-wing Republicans from Ken Blackwell in Ohio to Rudy Giuliani and George Pataki in New York. Smith follows his model exactly-- both in terms of conservatism and corruption, which, of course, are inseparable anyway.
Smith was elected to the state Senate in 2000, minority leader in 2007 and Majority Leader in 2009, a post he held for around 6 months. After he was reelected last November he joined up with the Independent Democratic Conference to form a "bipartisan governing coalition" with Senate Republicans and prevent passage of any kind of progressive agenda for the state. And that brings us to him being dragged out of his Addisleigh Park home in handcuffs by FBI agents early this morning. One of his right-wing GOP cronies, as corrupt as he is and a Tea Party-backed political hack, City Councilman Dan Halloran was arrested at the same time. At the same time, FBI agents were hunting down and arresting Bronx Republican Chairman Jay Savino, Queens GOP vice chairman Vincent Tabone and several other corrupt Republicans who took bribes in a bizarre plot to make Smith the Republican candidate for NYC Mayor this year. Halloran, best known for his adherence to paganism and white supremacism, was the go-between for arranging the bribes for the Republican Party borough leaders. Times star investigative reporter William Rashbaum:
Smith has said he was considering running for mayor of New York as a Republican, and the charges contend that he made payments to Mr. Halloran in exchange for the councilman’s assistance in setting up meetings with Republican leaders as part of an effort to get on the ballot, the complaint said.The Times forgot to mention that Pagan Prince Halloran told a reporter outside his home that he "had no idea" why he was being arrested. Preet Bharara, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District: "These six officials built a corridor of corruption and greed from Queens and The Bronx to Rockland County and all the way to Albany. After all the public corruption scandals we've charged, the sad truth may be the most powerful special interest in politics is self interest."
The criminal complaint in the case was brought by federal prosecutors in Manhattan and was unsealed Tuesday morning. Mr. Smith, Mr. Halloran and the others were to appear on Tuesday before a United States magistrate judge in United States District Court in White Plains.
Mr. Smith, according to the complaint, agreed with a cooperating witness and an undercover F.B.I. agent, who was masquerading as a wealthy real estate developer, to pay off leaders of Republican Party county committees in New York’s five boroughs. The bribes were to be paid to obtain specific certificates authorizing him to run for New York City mayor as a Republican even though he was a registered Democrat.
The undercover agent and the cooperating witness served as intermediaries between the senator and Councilman Halloran, the complaint said.
“Public service is not supposed to be a shortcut to self-enrichment,'’ George Venizelos, assistant director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, said in a statement. “At the very least, public officials should obey the law. As alleged, these defendants did not obey the law; they broke the law and the public trust. There is a price to pay for that kind of betrayal.”
...The complaint details a brazen scheme hatched a series of clandestine meetings in hotels parked cars, restaurants and even the senator’s Albany office. The meetings, recorded by the undercover or the cooperating witness, were mostly between the senator, the undercover and the witness, and the councilman and the two government operatives.
Most of those involved, according to the complaint, were looking for something-- cash bribes were sought by the party officials and Mr. Halloran and Mr. Smith were seeking authorization to get on the ballot in the mayor’s race. Ms. Jasmin was seeking an ownership interest in a company she believed was involved in a real estate project.
The senator at one point became impatient, asking the undercover and the cooperating witness during a meeting in his office whether the committee leaders were delaying getting his certificates because they wanted more money.
Mr. Smith, according to the complaint, instructed the two men not to pay the committee leaders any more money until they had “close[d] … the deal.” He also said that before the leaders received “even a nickel more, [he’d] have to stand on the Empire State Building and drop every person [he] endorsed and hold Malcolm up and say he’s the best thing since sliced bread. Matter of fact, he’s better than sliced bread.”
According to the complaint, Mr. Halloran set up a meeting at which the undercover agent and the witness met Joseph J. Savino, the Bronx G.O.P. chairman, and Vincent Tabone, vice chairman of the Queens Republican Party, and negotiated the amounts of the bribes for the documents. In exchange, Mr. Halloran sought and received more than $20,000 in cash for himself, prosecutors said.
Mr. Tabone and Mr. Savino were paid bribes of more than $40,000 and were promised $40,000 more, and they in turn agreed to use their official capacities with Republican county committees to obtain the documents Mr. Smith would need to run for mayor as a Republican.
Mr. Smith, in exchange for help from Mr. Savinio and Mr. Tabone, agreed to use his Senate office to help win state funds for a road project in Spring Valley that would benefit a real estate project that Senator Smith believed was being built by a company belonging to the undercover agent.
The complaint said that on Nov. 16, Mr. Smith met the undercover agent and the cooperating witness at a hotel in White Plains and asked the witness to contact a Republican Party county chairman identified in the charges only as “County Chairman #1” to try to “change him” by persuading him to support Mr. Smith rather than another mayoral candidate whom the chairman had publicly supported.
...On Tuesday, the arrests immediately reverberated through the mayor’s race. Mr. Tabone is a paid consultant to the Republican mayoral campaign of John Catsimatidis, the grocery store magnate. Records show Mr. Catsimatidis has paid Mr. Tabone $3,000 so far this year. Another Republican mayoral candidate, Joseph J. Lhota, recently welcomed the endorsement of Mr. Halloran, who was also arrested on Tuesday morning.
Late last year, Mr. Smith, who was elected Senate president in 2008 and ousted in 2010, joined a group of insurgent Democrats-- the Independent Democratic Conference-- and said around the same time that he was considering running for mayor as a Republican.
He was seen as a key recruit for the conference, a five-member faction that formed a leadership coalition with Republicans in the Senate. Before Mr. Smith joined the caucus, there was criticism that a faction of white Democrats was joining with the all-white Republican conference; the presence of Mr. Smith, an African-American and a last-minute recruit to the Independent Democratic Conference, helped blunt those concerns.
The move came with some incentives: beyond his increased influence, the New York Post reported that his staff budget increased by about two-thirds since he joined the conference.
Mr. Smith has been a subject of several criminal inquiries in recent years. One, which had apparently begun by early 2010 and was conducted by federal prosecutors from the same office that sought the indictment that led to Tuesday’s arrests, was focused on a nonprofit linked to Mr. Smith and a United States representative, Gregory J. Meeks. In that case, the prosecutors subpoenaed records from Mr. Smith’s Senate office that detailed money he had directed to community groups for a decade. Mr. Meeks has not been accused of any wrongdoing.
...Smith, along with the Senate Democratic leader then, John L. Sampson of Brooklyn, was also among those named in a scathing State Inspector General’s report in 2010 that said the Senate’s leaders had manipulated the choice of who would build New York City’s first casino.
The 308-page report, on the competition to install video slot machines at the Aqueduct racetrack in Queens, was referred to federal and state prosecutors and the Legislative Ethics Committee and said the senators had leaked information and shown favoritism to a troubled bidder that was donating to Democratic candidates and had ties to key political figures. No charges have been brought in relation to the casino contract.
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