Mayor de Blasio will face no criminal charges in the probe of his 2013 election campaign fund-raising, a federal prosecutor announced Thursday. (Jefferson Siegel/New York Daily News)

Mayor de Blasio dodged both state and criminal charges Thursday in connection with an alleged pay-to-play scheme, but was not spared sharp criticism for failing to abide by the “intent and spirit” of the law.

In simultaneous announcements, Acting U.S. Attorney Joon H. Kim and Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance Jr. revealed the mayor will not be prosecuted in connection with the sketchy money-raising efforts.

The mayor quickly claimed vindication, even though neither prosecutor declared that de Blasio or his aides followed the letter of the law in the 2013 campaign or the next year’s State Senate race.

“I can tell you this much: we did everything within the law, everything within a clear ethical standard,” the mayor said on his radio show Thursday morning.

Trump firing of Preet Bharara unlikely to derail de Blasio probe

“We sought guidance and clarity from the city conflicts of interest board along the way, sought advice from counsel."

Vance, in a 10-page letter explaining his decision, acknowledged “the conduct here may have violated the Election Law ... (but) the parties involved cannot be appropriately prosecuted, given their reliance on the advice of counsel.”

Essentially, those who participated were led to believe by election lawyer Lawrence Laufer that their fund-raising efforts were legal.

The district attorney added that his decision “is not an endorsement of the conduct at issue; indeed, the transactions appear contrary to the intent and spirit of the laws.”

U.S. Attorney’s office to grill de Blasio over fund-raising probe

The behavior of the mayor and his staff “creates an end run around the direct candidate contribution limits,” wrote Vance.

De Blasio — who received word of the statements as they were made public — bristled when asked about Vance’s scathing letter.
Acting U.S. Attorney Joon H. Kim announced the mayor will not be prosecuted in connection with his campaign financing.
Acting U.S. Attorney Joon H. Kim announced the mayor will not be prosecuted in connection with his campaign financing. (AP)

“We did things legally, appropriately, ethically and for causes that really mattered to people within New York City,” the mayor said. “That’s all there is to say.”

Kim, in his statement, said “after careful deliberation ... we do not intend to bring federal criminal charges against the mayor or those acting on his behalf relating to the fundraising efforts in question.”

Under fired U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, federal prosecutors in Manhattan thoroughly investigated incidents where “Mayor de Blasio and others acting on his behalf solicited donations from individuals who sought official favors,” Kim said.

Afterward, “the mayor made or directed inquiries to relevant city agencies on behalf of these donors,” the prosecutor added.

Kim said he decided to make a rare public declaration about the probe “in order not to unduly influence the upcoming campaign and mayoral election.”

The decision not to prosecute took into account “the high burden of proof,” said Kim.

The lack of charges will likely give pause to potential November challengers to the incumbent mayor — particularly those who awaited the outcome of the probe before making a decision.

Bradley Tusk, a former Bloomberg adviser looking for a Democrat to run against de Blasio, admitted as much.

“Although the city deserves far better than this, the people best positioned to succeed in a Democratic primary are now unlikely to run — and we should therefore expect four more years of Bill de Blasio," Tusk said in a statement.
The investigation into Mayor de Blasio's campaign fund-raising was spearheaded by former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara.
The investigation into Mayor de Blasio's campaign fund-raising was spearheaded by former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara. (BRENDAN MCDERMID/REUTERS)

But prime GOP challenger Paul Massey said the investigations alone were enough to raise questions about the mayor.

“The stench of corruption emanating from City Hall remains, with a record number of misconduct investigations into Mayor de Blasio (D-Corruption) at a cost of millions of dollars to taxpayers,” he said in a statement.

De Blasio met with federal prosecutors in February to answer questions about whether he or his aides offered any quid pro quo for donors to his campaign or his now defunct nonprofit Campaign for One New York.

He also sat down with the Manhattan district attorney in December. Both the federal and state grand juries began hearing evidence in the probe at about the same time.

Critics and ethics watchdogs blasted the Campaign for One New York as essentially a slush fund for the mayor. The nonprofit group accepted donations from a mix of developers, unions, lobbyists, and other firms — some with business before the city.

Donors to Campaign for One New York who had business pending with the administration gave at least $3 million of the $4.3 million raised by de Blasio.

The fund-raising practices in the upstate Senate races were intended to steer donations to four candidates.

Cleared as well were Emma Wolfe, a de Blasio confidante and the mayor's intergovernmental affairs director, and Ross Offinger, one of his fund-raisers.

“We've maintained throughout this investigation that our client Ross Offinger did nothing wrong,” said his lawyer Harlan Levy. “Today's decision vindicates his integrity and professionalism.”

A lawyer for Sheldon Silver cited a unanimous Supreme Court decision that narrowed the definition of what kind of conduct can serve as the basis for a corruption prosecution, as he argued on Thursday that the disgraced former speaker of the State Assembly should be acquitted or granted a new trial.

The lawyer, Steven F. Molo, invoked the 2016 Supreme Court decision — which was handed down seven months after Mr. Silver’s conviction and involved former Gov. Bob McDonnell, a Virginia Republican — in arguments before a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in Manhattan.

But a federal prosecutor told the panel that the evidence at Mr. Silver’s trial “overwhelmingly established that Sheldon Silver abused the immense power that he had as the speaker of the Assembly,” and that his case was “nothing like the McDonnell case.”

The McDonnell ruling has become a focal point of Mr. Silver’s appeal and the appeals of Dean G. Skelos, the former Republican majority leader of the State Senate, and his son, Adam, who last year were both also convicted of corruption charges. The Skeloses’ appeals have not yet been argued.
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Mr. Silver’s and the Skeloses’ convictions were the culmination of a campaign against corruption in Albany led by Preet Bharara, the former United States attorney in Manhattan. His office won a string of convictions of current or former state legislators before he was fired last week by the Trump administration.

Mr. Bharara was not present at the arguments. His former deputy, Joon H. Kim, now the acting United States attorney, was in attendance.

Mr. Silver, 73, a Democrat, who served for more than two decades as Assembly speaker and became one of New York’s most powerful politicians, was also not in the courtroom.

Evidence at trial showed that Mr. Silver had orchestrated two criminal schemes in which he obtained nearly $4 million in illicit payments in return for official actions that benefited a cancer researcher at Columbia University and two real estate developers, Glenwood Management and the Witkoff Group.

In one scheme, Mr. Silver arranged to have the State Health Department award two grants totaling $500,000 to the researcher, Dr. Robert N. Taub. In return, Dr. Taub referred patients with potentially valuable legal claims to a law firm, Weitz & Luxenberg, that gave Mr. Silver a portion of its fees.

In the second scheme, Mr. Silver arranged to have the developers move certain tax business to a law firm, Goldberg & Iryami, that also shared its fees with him. In return, Mr. Silver supported critical rent legislation that Glenwood backed, for example, and met with its lobbyists.
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Mr. Silver was convicted of honest services fraud, money laundering and extortion, and he was forced to forfeit his assembly seat. He faces a 12-year prison sentence, but the trial judge, Valerie E. Caproni, granted his request to remain free on bail while he appealed.

There was no question, Judge Caproni wrote, that Mr. Silver “took a number of official acts — most obviously passing legislation and approving state grants and tax-exempt financing — as part of a quid pro quo” in the two schemes. But there was a “substantial question,” she added, of whether the court’s jury instructions, which defined official action, were in error in light of the McDonnell decision, and if so, whether such error was harmless.

The McDonnell ruling says that official action must involve formal and concrete government actions or decisions, like filing a lawsuit or holding a hearing, not just making phone calls or setting up meetings.

“The definition that was given by the district court is too broad,” Mr. Molo, the lawyer for Mr. Silver, argued on Thursday, citing the judge’s instruction that “any action” taken under color of official authority “was sufficient to be an official act.”

Mr. Silver’s lawyers contend that there is no way to tell whether the jury, in convicting Mr. Silver, improperly relied on acts that would not be considered official under the McDonnell decision.

“McDonnell says you cannot instruct that way,” Mr. Molo said. “McDonnell changed the law dramatically.”

But the prosecutor, Andrew D. Goldstein, who is now chief of the corruption unit in the United States attorney’s office, distinguished Mr. Silver’s case from Mr. McDonnell’s, noting that Mr. Silver’s “was about far more than mere introductions and meetings and nothing more, which was the problem in McDonnell.”

“Here, as the court required and the jury found,” Mr. Goldstein said, “Sheldon Silver engaged in official decision-making as the opportunities arose, in order again and again and again, for each scheme, over a decade’s period of time, to benefit those who were paying him.”

The panel, which included Judges José A. Cabranes, Richard C. Wesley and William K. Sessions III, gave no indication of when it would rule.

Who knows he should be in jail. Then again the fake Italian can be bought so it might be good if he is reelected. We have MMA because of him I like that and we have urber because of him I like that as well. There is still talk of Hillary running for major and they have another democrat running against him on the democrat ticket. The cops hate him so he got that going for him. More crime here then before because of the no frisk policy. I think minorities have to be able to make money as well. They work cheap any one who works cheap is a good thing. Then we have the cop I run into all the time is thinking of running. I might donate to any democrat to keep him from becoming mayor.

So maybe DeBlasio will run for governor if our governor wants to run for president so is it all clear for you now

He keeps saying he is but you lose money to do it. So I will believe it when I see it. But another democrat can beat DeBlasio fairly easily like a Hillary. Maybe she will run again for president when she is 94 he can lift a pie, but can't lift the Giglio. He will probably be there again in August. I will be there I will get him to lift it for real this time.

Foot,

Your favorite German Italian is making up new rules.
He's named a few of his advisors as "agents" and claims that his communication with them is exempt from public view.

https://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/2016052...den-from-public

A Manhattan judge has ordered Mayor Bill de Blasio to release emails he wants kept secret in which he and a close friend — who is also a private consultant to clients with business before the city — strategize on municipal matters.

In a 13-page decision dated Tuesday but released Thursday, state Supreme Court Justice Joan Lobis rejected de Blasio’s argument that the close friend, Jonathan Rosen, is an “agent of the city” whose correspondence should be exempt from disclosure under New York’s Freedom of Information Law.
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“Clothing informal relationships such as that of Rosen and the Mayor with . . . [special legal] privilege impermissibly broadens the exception to FOIL, counter to the public interest in transparency in government,” Lobis wrote. “Rosen is a private citizen whose private interests may diverge from those of the City in connection with his representation of his private clients, some of whom conduct business which may be impacted by city policies, such as zoning matters.”

Lobis made her ruling on a lawsuit filed by news outlets seeking the emails’ release after de Blasio refused their previous requests.

Rosen, a longtime de Blasio adviser, is a principal in the political consulting firm of BerlinRosen, which has reportedly seen its business boom since de Blasio took office in 2014.
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Bill de Blasio

Dan Levitan, a BerlinRosen spokesman, declined to comment on the lawsuit.

De Blasio has designated at least five people and their work colleagues as “agents of the city,” informal advisers whose correspondence, the mayor and his lawyers argue, should be exempt from public disclosure — just as the law protects correspondence between official advisers, aides and consultants who have been formally retained. In ruling against the mayor, Lobis noted that Rosen was not “retained.”

Correspondence between other “agents” is the subject of pending legal requests by several news organizations, including Newsday.

On Thursday afternoon at a midtown event, de Blasio refused to answer questions about the lawsuit — or anything else except a marginal tax on home purchases above $2 million he was promoting but which lacks support of the necessary Albany leadership.

“Guys, you can ask all you want. Here’s what we are here to talk about,” he said in reference to the marginal-tax plan.