On Friday, the New York Daily News broke the news that "The head investigator for the state Board of Elections probed the 2014 fundraising efforts by (New York City) Mayor de Blasio and his team on behalf of the (New York State) Senate Democrats and found enough 'willful and flagrant' violations to warrant a criminal referral to the Manhattan DA’s office."
The story has attracted virtually no national establishment press attention. The New York Times, which seems to have sensed the gravity of the matter in the nick of time, ran an excuse-making pre-emptive Thursday story which appeared on the front page of Friday's print edition. After the Daily News reported the criminal referral recommendation, the Times returned to the matter on Friday evening — and placed their coverage on Page A17 of its Saturday print edition.
The Times's 1,600-word Thursday story, following up on less specific coverage which appeared on Tuesday, may explain why almost no media outlet outside of New York State has reported on the matter.
That's because its fundmental message, seemingly targeting other establishment press reporters and editors as much as the paper's own readers, was this: No one has ever been prosecuted under the "obscure" statute involved, so this really shouldn't be a story.
Here's verbiage from the report by J. David Goodman, William Neuman and William K. Rashbaum which supports that assessment (bolds are mine throughout this post):
Obscure Ban Is Driving Inquiry Into de Blasio’s Fund-Raising
During most election cycles, Putnam County, N.Y., is a sleepy backwater, with few donations of more than $1,000 coming into the local Democratic committee in the decade beginning in 2004.
But 2014 was different. Amid an aggressive push by Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York City to wrangle donors to help secure Democratic control of the State Senate, a flood of large contributions started pouring into the Putnam committee and at least two other county committees.
Over two weeks in October that year, the Putnam committee received 16 donations, totaling $547,300, from labor unions, real estate interests and individuals including the grocery store magnate John A. Catsimatidis. The money then went to two Democratic candidates in tight Senate races, Terry Gipson and Justin Wagner, who would have been barred by state election law from collecting such large sums directly.
Now those donations, solicited in part by the mayor’s campaign apparatus, are under scrutiny as part of a multipronged criminal investigation being conducted by federal and state authorities, several people briefed on the matter have said.
The inquiry into the 2014 donations is based on a state ban on contributions to a party committee if they are given or solicited for a particular candidate, with an intent to evade individual contribution limits.
... It appears that prosecutors have never made a criminal case under this section of state election law, a violation of which would be a felony: Records going back to 1999 show no arrests or arraignments on the charge, according to the State Division of Criminal Justice Services.
Nonetheless, what prosecutors investigating the State Senate fund-raising effort appear to be seeking, in subpoenas issued this week by the Manhattan district attorney’s office, is evidence of a scheme to use the county committees to illegally redistribute contributions to candidates favored by Mr. de Blasio.
There seemed to be little question where the money sent to county committees should ultimately end up, officials with the committees said.
You see, according to these three ace reporters and the Times editor(s) watching over them, since no one has ever broken this law until now, it must be "obscure." Or perhaps they want us to believe that there's an "obscure" type font in the New York State legal code which tells us which laws are and aren't important.
So because this law is "obscure," the three reporters and the person or persons reviewing their story seem to believe that it's really weird and out of line that prosecutors are "nonetheless" aggressively investigating.
It appears that either the Times reporters were unaware that a criminal referral had already been recommended even before the subpoenas they described were issued, or that they were aware of the referral and decided not to report it (my money is on the latter), leaving Kenneth Lovett at the Daily News to do the heavy lifting:
EXCLUSIVE: De Blasio team skirted campaign donation limits; investigators found 'willful and flagrant' violations 'warranting prosecution'
... The Daily News obtained a bombshell memo state Board of Elections Chief Enforcement Officer Risa Sugarman sent to the board’s four commissioners on Jan. 4 recommending the referral.
“I have determined that reasonable cause exists to believe a violation warranting criminal prosecution has taken place,” Sugarman wrote. “The violations discovered by this investigation can only be described as willful and flagrant.”
The commissioners, during a closed-door vote, made the referral on Jan. 11, sources said, which is now part of a broader probe by the DA and Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s office.
Sugarman’s memo paints a picture of a coordinated effort by the mayor and his allies — dubbed interchangeably as “Team de Blasio” and “Team Coordinated” — to deliberately circumvent legal campaign donation limits in three upstate races in what turned out to be an unsuccessful effort to help Democrats win control of the state Senate in 2014.
The memo did not spell out exactly who could be charged. Deliberately evading campaign donation limits would constitute a felony.
... Sugarman, who was appointed by Gov. Cuomo, wrote that the effort on behalf of the Dems was led by de Blasio and his team and included a group of influential political consultants and labor unions close to the mayor, the Senate Democratic Campaign Committee, several of the candidates who were helped, and the Ulster County and Putnam County Democratic committees.
... Sugarman said there is evidence demonstrating that the de Blasio team coordinated its fundraising activities and intentionally solicited significantly higher-than-allowed contributions for three candidates — totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars — by having the checks sent to the two county committees and the Senate Democratic Campaign Committee, which then quickly transferred the funds to the campaigns.
... Unions like the powerful Service Employees International Union Local 1199, SEIU 32BJ, the state Nurse's Association, and the Communications Workers of America were among those who gave big amounts to the county committees though they never had before. Developers and powerful businessmen who had business before the city like supermarket mogul John Catsimatidis ($50,000) and Alexis Lodde ($100,000) also gave mega contributions to the county committees.
Sugarman wrote that by serving as “straw donors” that simply passed through the donations to the candidate campaigns, the Senate Democratic Campaign Committee and the two county committees may have also violated the law.
That's quite a list of people who could be charged with felonies.
A search on Bill de Blasio's full name at the Associated Press's main national site returned no result relating to the investigation. Oh, but the wire service does have a dreadfully important dispatch on how a "NEW LAW MANDATES BETTER MANNERS FROM TIMES SQUARE CHARACTERS." (That's sarcasm, folks.)
The only other nationally visible outlets which have covered the story — other than the center-right and decidedly non-establishment New York Post and Washington Times — are the Politico (in its "New York Playbook") and The Hill.
Can anyone imagine New York Times reporters and editors adopting the same posture they have with de Blasio if Republican Mayor Rudy Giuliani had instead become involved in something like this when he was Gotham's mayor?
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
