I tried to write a roundup of what's going down in New York on Saturday but was thwarted by the internet gnomes that were migrating Big Orange at the time.
A lot has happened since then! Here's a roundup of what is happening with the Republican majority leader of the New York state Senate, his idiot son and a certain US Attorney. Here's how we've been covering developments over at The Albany Project.
We've known for awhile that US Attorney Preet Bharara has been circling around Dean Skelos. Then we learned that Bharara was not only interested in Skelos but in his son as well and was already presenting a case to a federal grand jury. We learned shortly thereafter that Bharara had subpoenaed docs from every Long Island state senator not named Skelos.
And then, on Friday night, all hell broke loose when both the Times and the WSJ broke stories simultaneously reporting that Dean Skelos and his son would indeed be arrested on federal corruption charges as early as today. The WSJ informed us that the charges against Skelos and son include conspiracy, soliciting bribes and extortion.
Federal prosecutors are expected to announce criminal charges against New York state Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos imminently, possibly as soon as Monday, in connection with a continuing corruption investigation, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan and the Federal Bureau of Investigation in New York have been investigating Mr. Skelos and his son, Adam, as part of a wider probe into allegations of corruption in Albany. Both men are named in a lengthy criminal complaint being prepared by prosecutors that as of this week included allegations of conspiracy, extortion and solicitation of bribes, according to the person.
Par for the course these days in the Empire State. Skelos is now the
fifth state Senate majority
in a row to be
indicted by the feds for corruption. Excelsior!
Early this morning, rumors began to surface that Skelos and his son would be turning themselves in to federal authorities this morning. And that's exactly what happened.
Dean G. Skelos, the leader of the New York State Senate, and his son were arrested early on Monday by federal authorities on corruption charges, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
Mr. Skelos, 67, and his son, Adam B. Skelos, 32, surrendered at the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s New York office in Lower Manhattan, the people said.
Shortly after it was learned that Skelos and son were in federal custody,
the actual criminal complaint was leaked and, man, it is a fucking doozy, even by New York standards.
Within seconds an Albany beat reporter flagged this gem:
Another noted this juicy bit as as well.
Yeah, young Master Skelos, the US Attorney really was listening to your every phone call.
Then, as we dug a little deeper, some really ugly stuff came to light.
Unlike the indictment against disgraced former Assembly speaker Sheldon Silver, the complaint against Skelos is loaded with quotes from wiretaps. And what they reveal is that Dean Skelos is an amoral scumbag. Here he is cheering on floods on Long Island that might make things better for the out of state company that had essentially bought him and his office.
And here's Dean Skelos shaking down Nassau County execs for payments to that same company, AbTech, who had hired Skelos' idiot son for $200,000 even though he "knew notheing" about the company's product, at the wake for a cop killed in the line of duty. No, really.
Stay classy, Senator Skelos.
We're still combing through the complaint over at TAP. I'm sure there's plenty more such awfulness to be discovered.
But there is one final tidbit that has the potential to absolutely freaking massive, a potential nuclear strike on Albany's endemic culture of corruption.
Mega real estate developer Leonard Litwin is by far the biggest political donor in New York. He's given many, many millions to pols of both parties. Litwin singlehandedly gave Andrew Cuomo a cool million bucks last year through our disgraceful "LLC loophole" (and got a sweet $260 million publicly backed loan in return) and his largesse greatly helped Dean Skelos win an outright Republican majority in our state Senate last year.
And Litwin's name just keeps turning up in all of these new scandals. He shows up in the Sheldon Silver indictment. His Glenwood Management is up to its eyeballs in the Dean Skelos scandal because of its ties to AbTech. It seems that Leonard Litwin and his money are everywhere these days.
Litwin is 100 years old and employs a bagman to distribute all those many millions in campaign contributions to pols from Montauk to Watertown.
That guy is now cooperating with the feds. Oh yes he is.
"CW-1" is cooperating witness 1and "Developer-1," just he was described in the Sheldon Silver indictment, is none other than mega-donor Leonard Litwin. Ho-Lee-Shit.
I've been toying with a post for weeks that I'd like to title "Will Leonard Litwin and his money take down the entire Albany political establishment?" Guess I should've written that piece because this development, the guy in charge of purchasing pols of both parties for the use of the state's top political donor cooperating with the US Attorney, is a fucking bombshell. There's just no other way to put it.
So two of those "three men in a room" are now facing federal corruption charges.
And Preet Bharara now has loads of new wiretap targets thanks to Sheldon Silver.
How well you sleeping these days, Governor Cuomo?
UPDATE: Dean Skelos and his kid were set to make lots and lots of (totally dirty, totally corrupt) cash from fracking in New York until Cuomo screwed it all up for them. So sad.
Also, why is Dean Skelos way more screwed than Sheldon Silver ever was? Those wiretaps.
(Image via Governor Cuomo's official flickr page.)