(x-posted from The Albany Project)
Rather significant update below!
It looks I may have missed the potential significance of that additional charge that we learned about last week when US Attorney Preet Bharara handed down the formal criminal indictment against Dean Skelos and son. Bharara alleges that a Nassau County based malpractice insurer, believed by almost everyone to be Physicians Reciprocal Insurers, paid young Adam Skelos $100,000 in salary and benefits for a no show job while they were simultaneously lobbying the elder Skelos. That’s a pretty big no-no and seemingly just another example of just how brazenly corrupt Dean Skelos (allegedly) is.
That firm, PRI, has greatly stepped up its lobbying game in recent years, nearly doubling the money they’ve spent lobbying Albany. They’ve even hired four big-time lobbying firms to make their case with the governor and the legislature. One of the lobbyists hired by PRI is one Brian Meara. Meara is up to his eyeballs in the federal corruption case against disgraced former Assembly speaker Sheldon Silver.
One of the company’s frequent lobbyists for the past half decade has been Brian R. Meara, the lobbyist widely reported to have acted as a cooperating witness in the federal indictment brought against former Assembly speaker Sheldon Silver.
But here’s where it gets really interesting. PRI’s CEO is a man named Anthony Bonomo. Bonomo has numerous ties to Andrew Cuomo and was even just appointed by Cuomo to head the New York Racing Association just a few weeks ago in April.
Bonomo and PRI have also become big time political contributors as well, spreading hundreds of thousands of dollars around Albany last cycle. Want to guess who the biggest beneficiary of Bonomo and PRI’s largesse was?
Anthony Bonomo is firmly enmeshed in the state’s campaign finance firmament. P.R.I. and members of the Bonomo family have donated more than $877,000 to state-level candidates and party committees in the 2014 election cycle, placing them among the top 25 largest contributors in the entire state, according to the state Board of Elections.
The largest beneficiary was Cuomo. The governor along with the state Democratic Committee received nearly $400,000 over the past four years from the Bonomo family, according to Board of Elections records.
So Bonomo and his firm have spent a fortune on lobbying and campaign contributions over the last few years. They even went so far as to give Dean Skelos’ son a $100K for a no show job in order to get their way. They gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to Andrew Cuomo. And one of their lobbyists is already cooperating with the US Attorney in another federal corruption case. And Cuomo just appointed the CEO to run New York’s horse racing organization.
Neither Bonomo or PRI have been charged, even though it appears they certainly could be for giving a lawmaker’s son 6 figures for a no show gig. In a statement released Friday, a spokesman said the Bonomo and others at his firm are now “are fully cooperating with the US Attorney’s office.”
That should sound pretty ominous for Team Cuomo.
Here’s what I think is going on. I think that it becomes clearer everyday that Preet Bharara neither Sheldon Silver or Dean Skelos are his ultimate target and that he is methodically arresting and indicting his way through Albany with a certain bigger fish in his sights. And he’s picked up some prime cooperating witnesses along the way while leaning hard on those he’s already nabbed to flip.
Look at was happened in just the last few months. Bharara turned up the heat on Sheldon Silver after his arrest and indictment by then indicting his son-in-law for allegedly running a $7 million Ponzi scheme through a firm co-owned with Silver’s daughter who also serves as the firms CPA. A week later, he added some fresh charges to the former speaker’s indictment just to make sure Silver got the message.
Then Bharara’s office leaked that not only was Dean Skelos under investigation, but that Bharara was presenting a criminal case to a federal grand jury that targeted not only Skelos, but also his son. He then arrests them both on federal corruption charges. Then, to turn the screws on Skelos further, tosses in this new charge, one that wasn’t mentioned at all in the initial criminal complaint against Skelos and son, about the no-show job from the firm run by a guy with significant ties to Cuomo.
Along the way, Bharara flipped the bagman for the state’s largest political donor, a man responsible for spreading millions in campaign cash all over the state to politicians in both parties, and let it be known that he now had god-only-knows how many new wiretap targets thanks to Sheldon Silver. That sent shockwaves through Albany and has lawmakers all over town freaking right the hell out. Bharara is so far in their heads that they are too scared to even do typical end of session horse trading for fear that Bharara will nail them for it. The recent FBI raids on the homes of WNY’s premier ratfcker Steve Pigeon and his cronies may be unrelated to all of this. Or maybe they aren’t.
This is all reminiscent of how prosecutors run mafia cases, working their way up the food chain by arresting and pressuring the hell out of the underlings to make a case against the boss. Bharara is doing exactly that. He’s getting closer and closer to the top of the pyramid. He’s putting enormous pressure on both Silver and Skelos to cut a deal, and in New York, there’s only one chair above them on the org chart.
And, as I’ve said before, my money is on Dean to flip first, leaving only one musical chair in the room, one that might begin to look awfully good to Sheldon Silver, though it may be too late by then.
It’s becoming increasingly obvious that Preet Bharara is not conducting a number of separate, unrelated investigations into corrupt Albany pols. He is conducting one massive investigation, one that is moving ever closer to the guy at the top.
That’s really, really bad news for Andrew Cuomo.
UPDATE:
Well, that was quick. It seems the Cuomo administration just unwillingly had to admit that Dean Skelos and Sheldon Silver aren't alone in Preet Bharara's sights, they're just the only ones indicted so far.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration is blocking the release of details about transactions between the state and the governor’s top campaign donor. The state’s housing agency says it cannot release the documents because it is “cooperating” with a federal prosecutor’s probe of financial relationships between New York lawmakers and campaign donors in the real estate industry who have business before the state.
In rejecting an open-records request, New York officials disclosed the Cuomo administration’s connection to the probe: The letter denying the request specifically cited an exemption for documents involved in a law enforcement investigation. That is apparently the first time New York state officials have acknowledged Cuomo’s housing agency — as opposed to just state legislators — is involved in the investigation.
Wow. If you haven't gotten that popcorn a popping yet, you may want to fix that.
As a certain US Attorney is fond of saying, "stay tuned."
(image via DonkeyHotey's Flickr)