In yet another of many instances of GOP corruption, the news today is reporting on federal grand jury charges being brought against a former New York judge named Thomas Spago. Spago, a conservative Republican, was one of the GOP fixers in 2000 who flew to Florida to try to stop the recount.
Imagine, a 2000 GOP operative being charged with a crime!
Some details, from New York law Journal.
Former Supreme Court Justice Thomas J. Spargo was indicted by a federal grand jury yesterday on charges of attempted extortion and attempted bribery for allegedly soliciting payments from a lawyer who was practicing before him in 2003.
A Northern District grand jury indictment charged Mr. Spargo with one count of attempted extortion for allegedly pressuring an Ulster County attorney to give $10,000 to Mr. Spargo, who was then a judge. He also was charged with one count of attempted bribery for allegedly intending to use "his official actions and influence to the benefit" of the Ulster County attorney if paid or, conversely, to harm the attorney if not paid, according to the indictment.
and some more details,
Mr. Spargo's alleged 2003 solicitations were at the heart of a state Commission on Judicial Conduct investigation that led to that panel's unanimous recommendation in 2006 that he be removed from the bench (NYLJ, April 3, 2006).
Mr. Spargo, an election law specialist with close ties to the state Republican Party, was elected to Supreme Court in the Third Judicial District in 2001. He was previously a town court justice in Albany County.
In the removal determination, Mr. Spargo was accused of shaking down lawyers to make contributions to the defense fund he said he wanted to establish to fight earlier investigations by the conduct commission. At one point in 2003, Mr. Spargo estimated that the legal fight against the commission had cost him $140,000.
The commission found that Mr. Spargo invited Ulster County attorney Bruce Blatchly into his chambers in November 2003 and, after asking his clerk to leave, told the lawyer that he wanted $30,000 from members of the local bar. Mr. Blatchly, who said he did not contribute, was the only person who presented evidence to the commission that Mr. Spargo was directly involved in soliciting funds.
The commission also contended that Mr. Blatchly was asked by Sanford Rosenblum, an Albany attorney who is close to Mr. Spargo, for a $10,000 donation to Mr. Spargo's defense fund.
Here incidentally is the state Commission on Judicial Conduct's report, which lays out Spargo's improprieties in detail.
And this 2006 article, from Citizens for Judicial Accountability covers Spargo's sordid history in much detail, noting, for example,
Justice Spargo, who came to the bench after a high-profile career as an elections lawyer and Republican Party advocate, also was criticized for engaging in a range of prohibited political conduct. But the most serious charges, and the ones the commission said warranted his removal from the bench, centered on an allegedly escalating pattern of misconduct after he came under the watchdog agency's scrutiny for political misconduct.
Justice Spargo first appeared on the commission's radar at a time when he was a part-time town justice and full-time elections lawyer and political consultant with deep ties to the GOP. In his role as advisor to the 2000 presidential campaign of George W. Bush, Justice Spargo was shown on national television partaking in a boisterous demonstration during the infamous Florida recount.
In addition, while sitting in town court, he presided over cases presented by the Albany County District Attorney's Office without disclosing on the record that the district attorney had been his client in a political matter and still owed him $10,000 in legal fees.
Then, while campaigning for Supreme Court in 2001, Justice Spargo courted voters by giving out doughnuts and jugs of cider, buying rounds of drinks for all the patrons of a bar and handing out to potential voters $5 coupons to a convenience store.
Additionally, while campaigning for the Supreme Court nomination, he gave the keynote speech at a Conservative Party fund-raiser in Monroe County, which is more than 150 miles from the district in which he was running for office. He also was accused of buying or giving the perception of buying a cross endorsement, which would guarantee an uncontested election, by paying off delegates. That charge, however, was rejected by a referee at a disciplinary hearing last year and was not pursued by the commission.
Anyway, this is all very typical for somone who would have described the 2000 Florida GOP mob in the following way.
Two GOP activists testified that ballots were manhandled when they were recounted in Miami-Dade County. The Bush camp insists that some chads were dislodged by rough handling of ballots and that the ballots were then counted as Gore votes.
But Gore's lawyers, and to a lesser degree, Sauls, questioned whether the two men participated in a ''riot'' at the Miami-Dade election headquarters, perhaps intimidating the canvassing board into stopping its initial hand recount of the ballots.
Republican observer Thomas Spargo denied there was such an effort.
''There was a relatively good-natured socialization that was going on,'' Spargo said.
Hopefully, he will enjoy a bit of time behind bars.