Author: buffalopundit

On the Eighth Day of Preetsmas

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The Money Orders

An article appeared in the Buffalo News on Saturday that confirmed rumors that had been swirling throughout town almost all last week.

On 8/19/13, the WNY Progressive Caucus—the “AwfulPAC” that is at the center of the current law enforcement investigation—reported receiving $4,000 from Frank Max’s Progressive Democrats of WNY. AwfulPAC reported that $4,000 as one lump sum, but for some reason Max’s group didn’t. AwfulPAC also says that it received money long before Max’s group says it contributed it, which is truly magical and prescient. Or just a bunch of BS.

The News wrote:

Now, questions center on the three postal money orders purchased on Aug. 14, 2013 and made payable to the WNY Progressive Caucus, according to the sources.

A name appears on the postal orders as the purchaser. But nobody familiar with the case can say if the person named on the money orders actually purchased them.

Kristy L. Mazurek, treasurer of the WNY Progressive Caucus, endorsed the postal orders and deposited them, the sources said. Yet state Board of Elections campaign finance records indicate no corresponding contribution.

The Postal Service maintains no requirement to show identification when purchasing or sending postal money orders under $3,000, according to spokeswoman Karen L. Mazurkiewicz.

(UPDATED: see editor’s note at bottom.) The person whose name appears on the money orders is Matthew Connors, the son of prominent attorney Terry Connors. Sources close to the investigation confirm this information, though other sources indicate that Matt Connors is a victim of fraud: We are told that law enforcement is satisfied that Matt Connors did not put his name on these money orders.

In any case, the money orders represent the missing $2,500, which was lumped into the $1,500 from the Progressive Democrats to show a $4,000 August 2013 deposit.

Matt Connors works for developer Nick Sinatra a Republican fundraiser with ties to Pigeon. It also bears mentioning that, although it’s not publicized on Sinatra’s website, Erie County Legislator Peter Savage III also works for Sinatra and was until recently the treasurer of the Committee for Change PAC, which Steve Casey now controls and generously contributed to Conservative Party candidate Joe Lorigo. Savage used to work for Casey and Mayor Byron Brown and it goes without saying that he has a relationship with Pigeon.

So many entities, so little time

In August 2013, Kennedy for Senate spent $39,500 for “consulting” with Niagara Frontier Business Solutions, which is a front entity for Jack O’Donnell. He is its registered agent, and the corporate address is his house. This underscores the fact that Kennedy for Senate participated in the primary election that year, triggering the obligation to file pre-primary and post-primary reports under Election Law 14-102.

The AwfulPAC shows an inexplicable liability owed to Marketing Tech—the company whose representative identified Steve Casey as its contact for all of AwfulPAC’s literature—which dates to May 9, 2013. That’s odd, since Mazurek and Pigeon claimed that the entity didn’t exist until August. Had it existed in May 2013, it would have been required to file a July periodical report to the state Board of Elections, and a 32-day pre-primary report. It did neither.

Mazurek’s Status

Mazurek is reportedly singing like a canary, having been questioned by federal and state officials. She and her attorney are now pretending that Mazurek had nothing to do with anything having to do with AwfulPAC. Right. Why, then, in September 2013 would she say she “started” the AwfulPAC?!

She started the PAC. She said so, and it was in all-caps, so you know it’s true.

AwfulPAC Isn’t / Wasn’t a PAC

Finally, the AwfulPAC and all of these other “PACs” aren’t really PACs, because no such thing exists under New York State election law. There are really only two recognized legal categories: party committee and political committee. Under the category of political committee, a PAC is simply a political committee that only donates money to other committees—either to a party committee or to individual candidate committees.  It does not participate in the campaign and does not buy goods or services on behalf of such a committee/candidate.  It is also bound by the campaign finance contribution limits as provided for in election law 14-114.

Contributions to such a (PAC) committee aren’t limited, but the PAC itself is bound by the same maximum contribution limits an individual. A PAC merely has to file a statement of its treasurer, depository, etc.; it doesn’t need to file the CF-03, where a political committee must swear under oath whether it is authorized to support certain candidates and then list them, and to state under oath the candidates whom it is supporting,but is not authorized by the candidate(s) to support.

For a standard political committee, whether it is authorized or unauthorized, the key is that the CF-03 makes them declare their hand, under oath, as to which candidate(s) they are authorized to support and which one(s) they are supporting without authorization—that is, as an “independent expenditure” committee (IE). Under election law 14-100 (9), such expenditures are exempted from the statutory definition of “contribution”—and thus not subject to the limits imposed by Article 14. Pigeon has always declared that his committees are PACs, as they clearly announced and called themselves initially, when they were discovered. And while they even filed their CF-02 late, they never filed (at least initially anyway) a CF-03—whereby they would have had to state who they were supporting and whether they were authorized or not authorized.  They simply hid behind the CF-02 PAC filing throughout August and to the date of the primary.

Mazurek then re-filed her CF-02 stating hers was a regular political committee (not a PAC) and claiming to be an IE.  Unbelievably, it was now dated onpPrimary day and received the next day by the state Board of Elections—after all the damage was done and no publicity could be had about the committee’s mission and who the candidates are that it was supporting.

Had its CF statements also been filed before the primary, the media, the public, and the opposition could have publicized those behind the committee. But it was all kept in the dark until the voters had been duped.

It gets worse. Though prodded by the state board of elections, Mazurek still never filed the CF-03 statement required for an unauthorized committee and naming the candidates that the committee was supporting until long after the board’s investigation was begun—sometime in early 2014. Most likely, Pigeon instructed Mazurek to just file as a PAC, and they figured they could skate past the primary. They succeeded in doing just that.

Now, however, if Mazurek rolls on Pigeon and tells this story, there is a possible conspiracy charge for filing a false instrument—possibly more—even before you get to coordination. Since Mazurek didn’t change the filing to an IE committee until the date of the primary election, all the time they were raising and spending money in August/September 2013 before the primary, they were filed as a political committee with no CF-03.  Can they file later and claim to be in compliance and legally—retroactively—an IE committee? Or maybe they are stuck being a PAC, thus having violated the campaign contribution limits on their face—with no recourse to claiming to be an IE, because they hadn’t yet filed for it properly. To allow them to retroactively gain status after the war is over would be a total perversion of the law.

We have to assume that prosecutors know about all of this, and the question is whether a jury would find the requisite intent with respect to the allegedly fraudulent filings, missing donors, hiding the names of the true donors, and, of course, the issue of coordination. That’s before we get to kickbacks and money-laundering.

EDITOR’S NOTE: At 3pm, June 8, the paragraph noted above was amended to reflect information from new sources, confirmed by original sources, suggesting that Matt Connors was not the source of the donations or the money orders in question.

On the Seventh Day of Preetsmas

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preetclaus

 

In case you missed them, here are the Preetsmas posts so far:

It’s more likely than not that the investigation into the Western New York Progressive Caucus – or “AwfulPAC” has spread into other areas, and the feds are following their own investigation and not just helping out state and local investigators.

‘Sup Frank Max?

New York’s election law is an overcomplicated morass designed to guarantee full employment for anyone with the herculean patience to figure it out. For instance, the maximum allowable campaign contribution in the 2013 Democratic primary election must be calculated based on the number of Democrats enrolled in the district under NYS Election Law 14-114(1)(b).  When calculated, the Board of Election posts it to its website. For instance, the maximum anyone could contribute to the (AwfulPAC-backed) Rick Zydel and Wes Moore 2013 Democratic primary election campaigns was somewhere around $1,100 – 1,200, for a single contributor.

Back during the 2013 primary season, Cheektowaga’s Frank Max was closely aligned with AwfulPAC – in fact, it was commonly referred to at the time as his & Mazurek’s. The name of his longstanding operation is the “Progressive Democrats of WNY” (all [sic]). If you take a look at that group, it gave the following to Zydel’s campaign:

  • 5/9/13     $2,500
  • 6/10/13   $150
  • 6/11/13   $600

Total: $3,250:  Nearly triple the maximum allowed.

There’s even $100 to the “Real Conservatives”, which we discussed briefly here. You always expect a “progressive” group to contribute to the “Real Conservatives” and The “Hamburg Conservative Club”

In the same document, three checks to the Wes Moore campaign from Max’s group are revealed:

  • 5/9/13    $2,500
  • 6/10/13  $150
  • 6/13/13  $350

Total: $3,000.  Over double the maximum allowed.

Frank Max should know better than that. He was until recently town chair of the Cheektowaga Committee, hoped to be the county chair – can he claim that his personal political organization didn’t knowingly and willfully violate the law?  Assuming the authorities have flagged this, it could be a useful way to encourage him to provide information on the entire AwfulPAC scheme.

Max is the treasurer for the Progressive Dems. Kristy Mazurek is (or was – the address is likely out-of-date) the treasurer for “Friends of Frank Max”.  It’s believed that Max was deeply involved with the goings on of AwfulPAC in 2013, but we haven’t heard much from Frank since the heat was turned up on the investigation.

Some History

Way back in 2009, Tom Golisano and Steve Pigeon’s absurdly named “Responsible New York (RNY)” PAC or “independent expenditure” committee had some interesting filings.

Note in its 2009 filings – the year after it attempted to bring democracy back to the NYS Legislature – on May 15, 2009, it received back as a repayment a “refunded expenditure” the sum of $120,000.  Such “expenditure” was supposedly made in August, 2008 by RNY.  And who “refunded” that $120,000 – why some entity known as “GSDP, LLC”.  A review of the Department of State website reveals that this LLC, which features Pigeon’s initials, has a registered address at Pigeon’s former law firm, Underberg & Kessler.

Good for GSDP to refund that huge sum of money to Responsible NY. There’s a problem, though – no such expenditure exists; Responsible NY never gave any money to GSDP. Maybe more interesting would be for the Tax Man to look at how GSDP “earned” that $120,000 (which is taxable) but then tried to write off a “refund” of an obligation that wasn’t GSDP’s. You can’t pay someone else’s debt and then deduct it as a business expense.

Oddly enough, the Board of Elections’ wonky website shows only two expenditures made to GSDP – from the Niagara County Republican Committee. It bears mentioning that the Cheektowaga address that GSDP lists in those disclosures matches that of “Citizens for Fiscal Integrity“, which gave money to Joel Giambra and Responsible New York. It also contributed to “People for Accountable Government“, whose treasurer appears to have been Pigeon associate David Pfaff. That group received $1000 from GSDP. In 2007, it reported $100 from Steve Pigeon and $2000 from Joel Giambra’s committee. In 2008, Pigeon supposedly contributed $20,000. That was the year of the Mesi campaign. CItizens for Fiscal Integrity was formed in 2005, and took in $13,500 from GSDP that year. It also took in $8000 from Roger Stone and his wife. It’s not clear from the disclosures whom that group was intended to help or harm.

What was this refund to Golisano’s committee all about? Golisano was drawing out a lot of the money by repaying his initial loan, so it could have been a refund not to GSDP but to Golisano himself, possibly in connection with the Joe Mesi race.

David Pfaff

Pfaff is a longtime Pigeon associate, and is currently employed in the office of State Senator Marc Panepinto. In 2013, Pfaff was living off the “consulting fees” of $800/bi-weekly, being paid by Frank Max’s “Progressive” Democrats while he was working for the Dick Dobson for Sheriff campaign and AwfulPAC – all at one time. In his 2015 bankruptcy filing, Pfaff claims not to have earned enough money to file tax returns for 2013 and 2014. But he had the cash to contribute $25 to Dobson?

Sources report that Pfaff petitioned in 2013 for candidates supported by the AwfulPAC, and assisted Dobson in Board of Elections proceedings.

Wes Moore

Moore was the beneficiary of thousands of dollars’ worth of expenditures by AwfulPAC against his primary opponent Wynnie Fisher, and on his behalf. It bears repeating that the smear campaign that Moore helped engineer with Kristy Mazurek against Fisher on the eve of the November election was thanks to information sent to Moore c/o Mazurek’s address, despite the fact that his Treasurer was shown at the BOE as being first in Buffalo and later in Clarence. The stench of illegal coordination is overpowering.

It, therefore, bears mentioning that Moore is reported to have contributed $300 on August 21, 2013 to the AwfulPAC making supposedly “independent” expenditures on his behalf. That is bizarre; practically unprecedented for a candidate who is the beneficiary of an independent expenditure to actually contribute to that very committee.  Was there a fundraiser for AwfulPAC that he attended? Did he speak with anyone there?

Amendments and Oddities

It appears as if AwfulPAC has amended its filings to eliminate what had originally been reported as a $25,000 fee to Landen, LLC – you can see it referenced in former Assistant District Attorney Mark Sacha’s complaint to the Moreland Commission. It appears here as an outstanding loan, but the original “loan” itself is nowhere to be found. Note that Landen, LLC is now listed at the same 101 Reo Ave address as GDSP and “Citizens for Fiscal Integrity”, as shown above.

Pigeon also used that Reo Ave address for many of his own contributions. For instance,

If you look at this article I wrote at the time, I reported that Landen had given Dick Dobson $200, but now the link shows an additional $400. I don’t know that financial disclosures were allowed to be so … fluid. Likewise, in Dobson’s first post-primary report, “Democratic Action” donated $9,000. That’s fine – that’s what a PAC is legally empowered to do. Except Democratic Action hadn’t filed a single disclosure during that cycle, its last being a “no activity” report in July 2013. Its last reported fund balance? $2,400. If you’re going to BS people, at least do so credibly.

A.J. Pierce Again

Aaron Pierce filed a lawsuit in state Supreme Court against three trucking companies that supposedly lost or converted $785,000 of untaxed cigarettes that Pierce was trying to transport from WNY to another Native American on Long Island. Pierce accused the trucking companies of stealing the cigarettes, and Justice Marshall dismissed the complaint because you can’t enforce an illegal contract.

Order Dismissing Complaint


It looks like Mr. Pierce and AJ’s Wholesale, LLC is out $785,000, and if the state Department of Taxation requires that state taxes be paid and stamps affixed to the cigarettes when they were placed on trucks for shipment through New York State to a different Nation, then he may also owe state taxes. Remember that one of Pierce’s companies was already in big trouble, with a big civil forfeiture for what amounts to a conviction for bootlegging cigarettes.  Did he really wire that $20,000 to Buying Time, as the AwfulPAC claims?

AwfulPAC’s Money

Here’s a handy chart of all the money that went into and came out of the WNYPC “AwfulPAC”. There is the aforementioned “loan” of $25,000 from Landen, LLC which is completely unaccounted-for. Also not the discrepancies in terms of the dates of money coming into AwfulPAC from Frank Max and Tim Kennedy. How was AwfulPAC able to account for $4000 in donations from the Progressive Democrats that didn’t come in until days – or weeks – later? Friends of Frank Max supposedly gave $1750 on 9/3/13, but it only had $100 on hand in the most recent previous filing, and there appears to be no entry for that sort of outflow.

WNYPC Money

As for Tim Kennedy, he contributed $85,000 to AwfulPAC and $10,000 to Democratic Action – which promptly turned around and donated it back to the favored candidates of the AwfulPAC – Dobson, Miller-Williams.  So Kennedy gave a total of $95,000 to the two committees, which he had to know were backing candidates in the September 2013 Democratic primary election. Under Election Law 14-102 (1), Kennedy for Senate (as did Democratic Action) “participated” in the primary election and had a duty to file pre-primary and post-primary campaign finance reports with the New York State Board of Elections.  However, neither did.

Under no circumstances is it legal or proper for a campaign or committee to participate in a primary election,  but make people wait until the following January to find out what they did. This may be a crime pursuant to Election law 14-126 (3). 

As to Democratic Action, all of a sudden in mid-2013, it received $10,000 from Kennedy and another $2,000 from Nancy Krzyzanowski, an employee of Collucci & Gallagher. That seems like an odd donation from to an obscure and largely inactive PAC. Then again, she’s also given $500 to Chris Collins, $1000 over time to the Tonawanda Democratic Committee, and – oddly enough – $3000 to the New York State Republican Committee in 2004. 

More to come as the Preetsmas gifts get hung on the chimney with care.

On the Sixth Day of Preetsmas

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Courtesy Chris Van Patten

Courtesy Chris Van Patten

As a consumer of information, you should be appalled.

As recently as May 24th, the Buffalo News’ political columnist, Bob McCarthy, dutifully did Steve Pigeon’s bidding, producing an opinion piece that amounted to faithful stenography of a longtime source’s spin. In this case, it was Pigeon spinning about why he had ended what had until recently been a likely mutually beneficial relationship with a Rochester-based law firm. Pigeon told McCarthy it had nothing to do with any investigation – but the state and federal raids came literally four days later.

At the conclusion of the piece, McCarthy took a story that should have been about Erie County Democratic Committee chairman Jeremy Zellner being one of only about 250 party leaders nationwide to meet with Hillary Clinton at her New York City HQ, but instead became one that disrespected Zellner as just another Lenihan henchman.

But it’s worse than that. A simple search of the Buffalo News’ website reveals ample droppings of Pigeon-sourced or Pigeon-puffing material. Some of it was so empty – consider Pigeon releasing to the press (PoliticsNY.net also had it) that new Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie had joined some local pols – including a couple who are now under investigation – at Pigeon’s house to watch a boxing match. Releasing it is one thing – McCarthy including it in his Sunday column is straight-up TMZ garbage.

Here, McCarthy gives equal time to the investigation into the WNY Progressive Caucus and a totally bogus claim that former Board of Elections Commissioner Dennis Ward ripped up someone’s nominating petitions in a fury. One resulted in a federal and state probe; the other one doesn’t exist.  Or how about quoting Pigeon in connection with a completely unrelated obituary note, thusly:

Few travelers along the campaign trail have made more friends than Tom Fricano, the former UAW leader and 1996 congressional candidate who died Feb. 14. Former Erie County Democratic Chairman Steve Pigeon, a longtime associate, recalled him like this: “He was a gentle person who was a true believer and did not demonize his enemies.”

Oh, how heartfelt, coming from WNY’s king ratfckr.

Here, we have McCarthy treating Zellner like a guy who somehow didn’t deserve the 69% of votes cast for his re-election as party chair. Note the headline and theme – it’s not about Zellner’s victory, it’s about Zellner’s foes and what they might do. Say what you want, but for a guy who the Mayor, the Governor, labor, and a bunch of Pigeonista malcontents apparently wanted out of the party chairmanship, Zellner crushed it.

Here, we find out that Pigeon opposed cross-endorsements by Zellner of Republican judges.

Pigeon will run his own slate of judicial nominating delegates – and will appeal for support from the seven smaller counties of the Eighth Judicial District.

A close political adviser to the governor, Pigeon’s efforts will encourage as strong a Democratic turnout as possible for Cuomo and his effort to sweep the western counties he lost to Republican Carl Paladino in 2010.

That’s nice. Pigeon’s slate failed miserably, and what does Pigeon’s efforts as a “close political adviser to the governor” – which is likely taken verbatim from Pigeon’s gob – have to do with anything? Where is the article about how Pigeon and his crowd backed Republican Deana Tripi over Democrats Carney and Crapsi in 2013? Where is the article about how Maurice Garner and Mike Darby were put in charge of the Pigeon effort to promote Tripi and defeat the Democratic slate? I hear Grassroots has since been embarrassed by its support of Tripi, and am waiting for confirmation of a story about something that happened in connection with a protest over the Eric Garner case. Where is the article about how this year, Pigeon’s people are helping Republican family court candidate Brenda Freedman?

In addition to this, we have this new phenomenon of candidates or political figures attempting to prove something to journalists by showing them documents purporting to be tax records. In 2015 it was “political heavyweight” Steve Pigeon showing something to Bob McCarthy, and in 2012, it was Chris Collins (R-Clarence) showing a portion of the records from three tax years to Jerry Zremski.

With respect to Pigeon, McCarthy wrote,

Pigeon opened his tax returns from the past several years to inspection at The News’ request in an effort to quell speculation that his contributions to the Progressive Caucus stemmed from anywhere but his own bank account. His records over the past three years indicate a mid-six-figure income, which he says proves his ability to spare $100,000 even for a fund supporting relatively low-level candidates.

He can afford big donations to a political cause the same way others could contribute to a church, he said, especially because he has no wife or children to support, takes few vacations, has no real hobbies and lives a non-extravagant lifestyle.

“It sounds odd, but when you look at how I live and how much I make, it really isn’t,” he said.

The questions were mild and hardly probative. Mostly because, upon information and belief, Bob McCarthy isn’t a CPA or a tax attorney and is no more or less knowledgeable than you or me when it comes to assessing someone’s purported tax returns .

But Collins was even more blunt with Jerry Zremski,

“My federal return is probably 25 pages long,” Collins added. “It’s too much for the public to absorb.”

It is journalistic malpractice to report on the alleged tax returns that some politician shows to a reporter. Jerry Zremski, like Bob McCarthy, likely has no more or less experience vetting and examining someone’s tax records than any other layperson. For the Buffalo News to arrange for a political figure to simply bring in and show off some paper purporting to be tax returns, and not having a CPA or a tax attorney on hand to provide analysis and guidance is simply shocking. For the News to do this repeatedly and report on it as if they had actually obtained some sort of information is incredible. Anyone can waltz into anywhere with a 1040 and some schedules and make-believe that it represents a tax return. It’s no wonder that McCarthy’s reporting on Pigeon has turned someone sharper since he realized that his longtime source didn’t disclose almost $250,000 in federal tax liens, which would have certainly been relevant within the context of Pigeon’s ability or willingness to fund a PAC in 2013 to the tune of $100,000.

I’m sure the feds are pleased that Pigeon reportedly has $100,000 to blow on obscure legislative primaries, but can’t pay his own taxes.

And what of that – the 2011 arrearage is pretty small – $14,000, but Pigeon’s tax debt for 2013 – the year of the Western NY Progressive Caucus – is over $112,000. How did this come to the IRS’s attention? An audit? Was it part of the forensic accounting that’s likely taking place behind the scenes in conjunction with this investigation? Let’s say Pigeon was right about reporting about $400 – 500k in income on the returns he showed McCarthy – did he underpay? Under-report? His effective tax rate is probably between 10 – 20% after deductions, so that’s a significant under-payment, to say the least. Was there “income” that came to – or through – Pigeon’s accounts that he didn’t report as income, but should have been? Questions abound.

In the meantime, it’s come to light that in 2010 Pigeon and his associate and fellow lobbyist Jack O’Donnell bought the “Front Page” group of newspapers, including Lackawanna’s Front Page and the South Buffalo News from former Conservative Party guru William Delmont. The entity that bought the paper is “South Park Ave Properties, LLC“, which shares an address with the Arab-American Society of WNY in a UPS Store in Blasdell. Delmont has since died, but his estate has filed suit against O’Donnell, South Park Ave Properties, Pigeon, and Sadeq Ahmed for an alleged debt of over $125,000, plus accrued interest. It’s alleged that O’Donnell, Pigeon, and Ahmed were all members of the LLC, and each of them executed a document personally guaranteeing all payments under the promissory note, and by January 2014 were accused of being in default.

Demand Note by Alan Bedenko

The action was brought as a motion for summary judgment, and Pigeon opposed it, claiming that Delmont had vastly overstate the papers’ viability and circulation.

Affidavit of Steve Pigeon by Alan Bedenko

Supreme Court Justice Walker denied the motion for summary judgment, and the case is proceeding in the usual course. Perhaps significantly, Pigeon and O’Donnell are represented by Ed Betz, who was until recently an attorney for the Erie County Water Authority, and before that for the City of Buffalo. Philips Lytle is representing Mr. Ahmed.

The papers themselves feature columns by SCOPE’s Budd Schroeder and articles by Tony Farina. As of January 2014, the papers have a new publisher – Frank Parlato of the Niagara Falls Reporter. Parlato announced that his acquisition is, “in joint venture with its current owners”, O’Donnell and Pigeon.

Next, we are hearing rumors that prosecutors have granted immunity to someone who is – or was – reasonably high up in Byron Brown’s City Hall. If true, it further speaks to the growing breadth and depth of this investigation.

Finally, Channel 2 interviewed Tim Kennedy on Thursday, who denied having lawyered up in connection with the Preetsmas probe. But here’s the thing:

1. Tim Kennedy filed an order to show cause relating to primary day vote counting on September 9th, but the attorney wasn’t Terry Connors – it was the aforementioned Ed Betz, who is also representing Pigeon and O’Donnell.

2. Although Kennedy claims that no one has spoken with him about the WNY Progressive Caucus or any investigation surrounding it, that defies credulity.  We already know that investigators interviewed everyone who gave or received any money from that PAC, and that its victims – like Wynnie Fisher and Lynn Dearmyer – were also questioned. We also know that Kennedy gave $85,000 to that PAC, so he had to have been paid a visit by state investigators.

3. Kennedy’s campaign finance disclosures show over $60,000 paid to Terry Connors’ law firm between August and November 2014. It wasn’t for election law stuff, since Betz was handling that. So, why so much and why then? What for? $60,000 is 200 hours’ worth of work at $300/hr, and that’s pretty much what it would cost to get a case tried. By contrast, in 2012 when Kennedy was in the fight of his political life against a Betty Jean Grant write-in insurgency, Kennedy paid Connors just $25,000.

Speaking of Terry Connors, his law partner’s bid to become a federal judge is moving right along. The Senate Judiciary Committee just this week approved Lawrence Vilardo’s nomination to be the newest federal judge in WNY. Yet, consider,

There is concern in the local legal community, however, over the prospects for approval of Denise E. O’Donnell, Schumer’s recommendation for Buffalo’s other vacant district judgeship. Even though Schumer submitted O’Donnell’s name to Obama in June of last year, seven weeks before he recommended Vilardo, the White House has not yet nominated her.

Why do you think that the White House hasn’t nominated Denise O’Donnell – Jack O’Donnell’s mother – to the federal bench, despite Chuck Schumer’s recommendation? I don’t know, either. Seems very odd.

A Preetsmas Story

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BAK

It bears repeating that the WNY Progressive Caucus was merely the latest iteration of a common Steve Pigeon modus operandi. He had been Pigeoning Democratic candidates for years while manipulating or cutting deals with whomever was convenient. Part of my antipathy for electoral fusion stems from Pigeon’s deft manipulation and marshalling of minor party lines.  He has conspired with Ralph Lorigo to steer the Conservative fusion Party line to his various candidates, and enjoys a close relationship with Tom Golisano, the founder of New York’s especially corrupt Independence fusion Party.

That’s why, for instance, Pigeon associate David Pfaff shows up as a vendor for the “Real Conservatives” PAC, which is controlled by Lorigo and based out of a funeral home in Hamburg which has contributed to Lorigo’s committee and also to Mickey Kearns.  That’s why a flush pro-Byron Brown PAC controlled by Steve Casey and based out of Casey’s home contributed to only one candidate – Conservative fusion Party candidate Joe Lorigo – in 2014 and 2013. So query why it took in $6,000 from Byron Brown’s campaign fund in the 11-day pre-General 2013 and another $6,000 from Brown in October 2013, while it only supported one Conservative fusion Party candidate.

None of this was new in 2013, but there was one major difference that tripped up Pigeon’s usual M.O. It was late August and early September that anonynous, no-attribution literature blasting then-incumbent county legislators Betty Jean Grant and Tim Hogues hit mailboxes throughout Buffalo. The mailers risibly accused Grant and Hogues of being right-wing Republicans, and praised their challengers, Joyce Wilson Nixon and Barbara Miller-Williams. I wrote at the time, “so long as people aligned with the breakaway Steve Pigeon faction of disgruntled nominal Democrats exist, there will be nonsense. It is ever thus.”

Under New York’s weak and usually unenforced election law, there is no requirement that the groups sending these sorts of mailers out reveal their identity or funding. “Paid for by” isn’t a requirement, and it protects shenanigans, instead of informing the voting public.

Generally, a PAC like the “WNY Progressive Caucus” would need to disclose to the Board of Elections where its money was coming from. But when these mailers hit in late August 2013, it hadn’t yet filed anything. The reason we found out about it was a FOIL request:

[Betty Jean] Grant on Friday charged that a rival wing of the local Democratic party is behind the anonymous ads. A request made under the Freedom of Information Act to the Postal Service has identified the permit holder on the mailings as the Western New York Progressive Caucus, headquartered on Doris Avenue in Lancaster.

That was Kristy Mazurek’s home, and she was listed as the group’s treasurer. Mazurek, at the time, had been a co-host of WGRZ’s “2Sides”, had helped direct the campaign of failed Comptroller candidate David Shenk, and then turned against Jeremy Zellner’s Democratic Committee and began running the campaigns of Pigeon-backed rogue Democrats Wes Moore and Rick Zydel in 2013. In August 2013, I called them the “emoDems”,

It should be noted that WGRZ 2Sides co-host Kristy Mazurek is [Wes] Moore’s and [Rick] Zydel’s campaign manager. Query why [her former co-host Stefan] Mychajliw would have felt the need to abandon the show when he ran for public office, yet the Democrat on the show feels no similar ethical obligation to do so, going so far as to attempt to ridicule an opponent on Facebook who wasn’t interested in going on the show.

Mazurek had taken to Facebook to ridicule Moore’s opponent Wynnie Fisher for refusing to appear on 2Sides. Yet why on Earth would a candidate appear on a show to be interrogated by her opponent’s campaign manager? It’s an insane proposition. Furthermore, Mazurek did leave 2Sides just days later. (There’s David Pfaff again, BTW):

And so, Mazurek Palinistically took to Facebook to issue a non-denial denial about the WNY Progressive Caucus’ literature:

Translation: After Shenk lost, Zellner didn’t hire/get me hired for something-or-other, and so I’m going to align myself with the people who are working to undermine and unseat him. Note that Mazurek doesn’t deny that she or her PAC sent out the anti-Hogues and anti-Grant mailings. She simply says the complaints “don’t have merit”. So, I replied:

Reply, (right under one from Erick Mullen, who did all of Jack Davis’ ads that relentlessly went after endorsed Democrat Jon Powers in ’08):

I have no idea what that means. So,

There was no reply, natch; I don’t think Ms. Mazurek knows what “meritless” means. Ditto her apparently erstwhile ally Pigeon, who said that the charges against him related to Mazurek’s PAC were “frivolous“.

These types of anonymous mailers come out all the time, and when anonymous, you can bet that the people behind it want to keep you in the dark. You should be insulted by them – they figure you’re an idiot; an ignoramus. Yet there’s no law that says they have to disclose who they are. So, if you’re outraged when your candidate gets anonymously and unfairly slammed by anonyms, you’re going to have to lobby Albany to demand that the Election Law be amended to (a) require that all campaign advertisements and literature clearly disclose who paid for them; and (b) institute a hefty penalty for any violations – penalties that are confiscatory deterrents.

Nasty people with unclean hands legally get to make electoral politics dirtier than it has to be. If Mazurek and the people behind the group for which she is treasurer think that Tim Hogues is a closet Clarence Republican and that Barbara Miller-Williams is the reincarnation of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, then they should disclose who they are.

The disgruntled nominal Democrats in league with Steve Pigeon might consider this, for instance: instead of working with Republicans and the fusion parties actively to undermine endorsed Democrats, why not convince the various and sundry committee members why they should vote for Frank Max or Mark Manna over Jeremy Zellner for party chair next time around? If you’re in league with the Conservative Party, why even pretend to be a Democrat?

But this time – in 2013 – the Pigeoning was discovered far earlier than Pigeon and Mazurek had expected, on August 30th. Because they were outed via FOIL request, they were forced to file disclosures just 11 days before the primary, and the disclosure was, at best, packed with fiction. Think about it – they clearly didn’t want to disclose who they were on the reams of literature they produced, and so long as people didn’t know who was behind it, they could defame opponents with impunity. This time, however, they were outed and came under a media microscope. Hogues and Grant filed complaints with the Board of Election, bolstered by former Assistant District Attorney Mark Sacha, and that complaint was referred to the state, which then referred it to state investigators, and it came before the Moreland Commission and into the hands of Preet Bharara.

And that’s the story of Preetsmas.

On the Fifth Day of Preetsmas

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Let’s try something new. We’ll establish a story about campaign finance irregularities, media laziness/bias, and frauds perpetrated on the news-consuming public of Buffalo almost exclusively through screen captures.

From a Bob McCarthy article dated February 21, 2105: Does Pigeon earn enough to make these huge 6-figure contributions and loans to quixotic PAC efforts?

Now, just four short months later, one has to imagine that hell hath no fury like a mustachioed columnist scorned:

Click to enlarge

So:

and:

and

More specifically,

and

On the fifth day of Preetsmas, my true love gave to me, five CPAs

On the Fourth Day of Preetsmas

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preetsmas

 

Mickey Kearns and Aaron Pierce

To what extent might Assemblyman Mickey Kearns be implicated in the Great Preetsmas Massacre of ’15? On Tuesday, I ran through the fact that Kearns had been a recipient of generous campaign contributions from a Seneca businessman named Aaron Pierce.  Pierce and his companies have recently run afoul of the law and been prosecuted, and he was named as having been a prominent donor to Steve Pigeon’s Western New York Progressive Caucus (“AwfulPAC”).

What are Mickey Kearns’ connections to Pierce?

1) The new turf football field at Mulroy Park was renamed Pierce Field “to recognize the extraordinary commitment and leadership of Aaron Pierce and the Pierce Family in making the project a reality.” (Common Council Proceedings of 9/20/11.) 

2) On May 15, 2013, Assemblyman Kearns nominates Pierce for a state award: “honoring the contributions of 142 everyday people who are working to make our District a better place, through volunteering, teaching, coaching and anyone who should be recognized for their contribution to the greater good.”

3) The political consulting firm which the media has recently reported as belonging to Steve Casey and Chris Grant, Herd Solutions, is shown in NYS BOE filings as a vendor to the Kearns campaign, though there is not enough expenditure to account for the volume of television and mailings utilized by that campaign:

Amount Date Report
$15,000 3/20/12 2012 27 day Post-Special
$8,500 3/08/12 2012 27 day Post-Special
$2,000 5/10/12 2012 July Periodic
$1,000 5/10/12 2012 July Periodic

It bears mentioning that Herd Solutions has several listed addresses throughout the New York State Board of Elections filings, and the most recent one is in Asheville, North Carolina. The website for “Herd Marketing Solutions” is down, but cached versions promote SEO management, online reputation management, and other public relations-type services. Herd Solutions shows past addresses that include Chris Grant’s home in Akron, an office rental facility at Delaware & North, and a Williamsville residence where a company called “Empowered Stables, LLC” was just registered in February 2015 to a Stephen L. Grant, likely related to Chris, since donations to Collins from Chris Grant appear from that same address in July 2008 reports, (also here to the GOP Committee).

4) Contributions from what are thought to be Aaron Pierce-controlled companies to Mr. Kearns in the 2012 campaign:

2012 Pierce to Kearns
Contributor Amount Date Report
ABCZ Holdings LLC Gowanda, NY $5000 2/28/12 2012 11 Day Pre-Special
AJ Cigar LLC Gowanda, NY $5000 2/03/12 2012 32 day Pre-Special
Hurricane Mgmt Gowanda, NY $5000 2/13/12 2012 32 day Pre-Special
James Bros Wholesale Irving, NY $5000 2/28/12 2012 11 day Pre-Special
Jays Candy & Tobacco LLC Gowanda $5000 2/03/12 2012 32 day Pre-Special
Med Assign LLC Irving NY $5000 2/13/12 2012 32 day Pre-Special
Pierce Munitions Gowanda, NY $5000 2/13/12 2012 32 day Pre-Special
Pierce Nat’l Enterprises Irving, NY $5000 2/28/12 2012 32 day Pre-Special
Red Jacket Mgmt LLC $5000 2/28/12 2012 11 day Pre-Special
Seneca Smoke Shop Gowanda, NY $5000 2/03/12 2012 32 day Pre-Special

That’s $50,000 from one likely contributor exploiting the LLC loophole. The Buffalo News reported that Mr. Kearns acknowledged that these contributions exceeded the allowable limit set forth in the law and pledged to return the excessive amounts.  Nine of these corporations received $900 refunds as reflected in the 11 day pre special report. It also bears mentioning that, for some reason, Kearns’ payments to Herd Solutions don’t show up in a search of the state BOE’s expense database – only by examining the specific disclosures that Kearns made. Something is wrong with the system, and it isn’t properly cross-referencing data.

Steve Pigeon, Gene Caccamise & Bricklayers’ Local 3

On another note, yesterday I used an image for a post that Steve Pigeon had Tweeted in 2013 to rebut an article of mine where I recounted two sources’ recollections that they had heard Governor Cuomo admonish Pigeon to stay out of the Hamister deal in Niagara Falls. Indeed, in all my years of writing about Pigeon, this was the one and only instance where he ever directly addressed one of my posts. He went on to write,

Gene Caccamise. 

Pigeon’s Tweets are dated September 12th, and the primary election had been held on September 10th. The image was taken, and the exchange with the Governor was held on the Sunday before the primary. Pigeon’s AwfulPAC (WNYPC) effectively ceased all activity after September 10th. It was July 2014 when I first began floating the theory that the financial shenanigans surrounding AwfulPAC were much more serious than just your typical run-of-the-mill Pigeoning of local races. In August 2013, the West Seneca town board approved up to $30,000 be spent to undertake an environmental review of the Seneca Mall site, but no one would say why. From the West Seneca Bee,

 

“It seems very cryptic when you read it,” said Hart. “People will wonder what’s going on.”

Meegan said she realized that, but they can’t “spill the beans.”

Hart also told the public that it is the intent of the board to rezone the former Seneca Mall site from industrial to commercial, as per the owner’s request. He said he could not offer much information but did say the proposed development would be a “game-changer” for the town.

 

Game-changer: football stadium? Casino?

AwfulPAC benefited from a huge cash injection from nominal Democrat and pro-life-oh-wait-pro-choice Tim Kennedy. But at the time, a singular donation of $25,000 from the International Union of Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers Local 3 was quite puzzling, and no one reported on it until I brought it up in July 2014. 

Pigeon’s friend Gene Caccamise was the regional head of that Bricklayer’s Union local until his resignation in March 2015. As to that donation, no one understood why it was made, and it’s glaringly odd because a $25,000 donation would have practically emptied the union’s account. The image above is taken from Pigeon’s WNYPC 2013 11-day pre-primary filing. By contrast, this is what the Bricklayer’s union’s disclosure shows on its corresponding 11-day pre-primary filing: 

We’re meant to believe that a union with only $28,000 on hand is emptying its account to fund the WNYPC? Indeed, a scan of this union local’s intake and outflow shows modest amounts – a few thousand coming in, a few hundred going out. It reports $5,000 to current Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren in its 11-day pre-General. It gave Sean Ryan $500 bucks. Its July 2013 report shows a little over $1,000 to Tim Kennedy, but at no time did the BAC Local 3 report $25,000 to the “WNY Progressive Caucus”, and such an outflow appears on no disclosure report whatsoever.

Could the investigation into where the WNYPC’s money came from – and this apparently falsified contribution from the bricklayer’s union help explain Caccamise’s recent departure? Caccamise remains the “ethics officer” and a member of the board of COMIDA, the Monroe County Industrial Development Agency. Sources say that the Buffalo representative from the Bricklayer’s Local 3 was as surprised as anyone when the contribution to the WNYPC was revealed, and claimed to have no idea why it was made. The theory is that Caccamise was close with developer Scott Congel and with Pigeon, and wanted jobs for the proposed West Seneca development, the renderings for which contained a lot of brick. 

Kristy “Turncoat” Mazurek

Michael Caputo’s PoliticsNY.net broke the story on its “rumors and innuendo” page that former WNYPC treasurer Kristy Mazurek had been granted immunity from prosecution in the ongoing Preetsmas criminal probe, likely in exchange for her cooperation. 

This is all just packed with schadenfreude. In September 2014, Mazurek tried to threaten Shredd and Ragan to not have me on air, adding that a “team of lawyers” was “monitoring” me. I went on air anyway. Fast-forward 9 months, Mazurek is represented by criminal superlawyer Joel Daniels, and has reportedly turned state’s evidence in connection with the ongoing state & fed criminal probe into the “WNY Progressive Caucus”, for which she was treasurer. In just 9 mos, Mazurek has gone from issuing threats to ratting out Pigeon & associates in exchange for immunity.

This confirms what Geoff Kelly and I thought in last week’s podcast, regarding why it was that Mazurek’s home hadn’t been raided. 

Senecas fire Pigeon

Two Tweets Tuesday afternoon from Liz Benjamin: 

 

The Seneca Nation is caught up in a criminal investigation thanks to the guys it hired as lobbyists. Investigators now have whatever records they recovered in last week’s raids on top of subpoenaed bank records likely being analyzed by forensic accountants, and the WNYPC’s own treasurer singing like a canary.

On top of all of this, rumors are swirling about who the real targets are. Clearly, Mazurek was a small fish worth flipping to get to the people who were really in charge. There are rumors that one prominent Republican developer contributed money to the WNYPC by illegally using or reimbursing a conduit, possibly involving a big-name attorney.

Some have suggested that calling this “Preetsmas” is wrong because his office is perhaps not necessarily involved in these investigations. We’re not 100% sure that it’s not, and certainly the US Attorney for the Southern District of NY has, at least, provided the proper environment for this probe to take place.  Bharara’s office took possession of control of the entire Moreland Commission records, which included complaints made against the WNYPC. This is Preetsmas, and on the 4th Day of Preetsmas, my true love gave to me, four rats a-ratting.

No way this is the end of this story. This is only the beginning.

“Are You a Christian?”

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Monday afternoon outside of Old County Hall, after an Eric Schneiderman anti-corruption rally had concluded, a well-dressed, baby-faced man who looked vaguely familiar approached me.

He came up to me and asked, “Are you a Christian?” I replied, “No.” He said, “I didn’t think so.”

Perplexed by this bizarre introductory exchange, I listened as this man began to harangue me over my allegedly unfair, horrible, and “bully[ing]” treatment of “Airborne” Eddy Dobosiewicz. He said I hadn’t been “very nice to Eddy Dobosiewicz” and that I had treated him horribly.

You may remember several weeks ago, I confronted Dobosiewicz about a racist Tweet he posted. That and his subsequent arguing lost Dobosiewicz a few jobs and led to him issuing an unqualified and sincere apology.

At this point, I made an embarrassing mistake. I would have sworn up and down that the man confronting me was Dobosiewicz’s former partner and friend, Marty Biniasz. I took to Twitter and Facebook about it before receiving a call from him informing me that he had been in Hamburg all day. I was shocked—frankly in disbelief—but apologized profusely to him, deleted everything from Facebook and Twitter, and apologized publicly. I would have picked Biniasz out of a line-up; I was 100 percent sure it was him, and told him he had an identical twin running around town who has a lot of concern about Eddy Dobosiewicz. I take this opportunity to apologize to Marty again.

As this mystery man who wasn’t Marty Biniasz continued his intemperate and confrontational defense of Airborne Eddy, I interrupted him and said, “What would my religion have to do with anything? If I was Jewish it would make sense to you that I might be deliberately unfair to ‘Airborne Eddy’?”  He said I threw Eddy under the bus, and I interrupted again and reminded him that Eddy threw himself under the bus, and that all of his wounds were completely self-inflicted. At this point he began to retreat and walk away, but not before calling me a “bully” and otherwise mean and horrific person for having the audacity to be critical of racist speech.

I called after him as he skulked away, saying, “You go around being critical of other people’s religion but I’m the bully?”

Marty Biniasz does indeed have a religious, Eddy-loving doppelganger named Mark Peszko. In the end, I figured out who it was. I sent an email to Peszko to confirm and, naturally, did not hear back. His resemblance to Marty Biniasz is uncanny. 

UPDATE: I spoke with Mr. Peszko this morning, and he acknowledged that it was he and I who had words yesterday. He was contrite and explained that he has a soft spot for the underdog, and when he saw me he confronted me out of a sense that I had been unfair to Dobosiewicz when I posted this piece on May 1st. Although Mr. Peszko’s recollection was that I had posted the piece about Polish riots after Eddy’s apology was released, the timing wasn’t exactly thus: I published my piece at 6:00 am, and the Dobosiewicz apology was released at 1pm. None of that, however, matters except insofar as it informs Mr. Peszko’s decision to confront me.

Mr. Peszko felt that I had been unfair to Eddy and approached me because he feels strongly about defending underdogs, especially when – as he did here – that he thinks that they’re being kicked when they’re down. We had a cordial conversation where we learned a lot about each other’s work, faith, and history, and I harbor no ill will towards him. I am sure he is an excellent attorney who zealously represents people of all races and faiths. 

But no. Whether or not I’m a Christian has no bearing whatsoever on how I deal with racism. Not identifying myself as “Christian” doesn’t explain how I treated Eddy Dobosiewicz,—quite fairly, I thought, as I confronted him directly on Twitter and gave him an opportunity to explain or retract. Were I Jewish or Buddhist or Muslim or atheist, it wouldn’t have any bearing on how I deal with anything that I consider to be bad or wrong.

Consider that this person not only has some sort of antipathy towards non-Christians but was upset not by Dobosiewicz’s behavior (for which he profusely apologized) but by the fact that I wrote about it.

Invoking God or Jesus Christ to justify or excuse racism seems to me to perhaps not understand the entire concept of faith or religion. Being accosted on the street by a stranger with such a profoundly absurd message was unsettling.

Ranzenhofer and the LLC Loophole

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Last week, in my story about Attorney General Schneiderman’s push for an ethics reform bill in Albany, I alluded to local state Senator Mike Ranzenhofer’s involvement, but it bears its own post.

One of Schneiderman’s proposed reforms would close what’s called the “LLC loophole”. This legal quirk enables politicians to raise massive sums of campaign cash that is difficult, if not impossible, to trace. For donors, it’s an easy way to (a) donate cash without leaving easily identifiable fingerprints; and/or (b) completely bypass and ignore the mandatory maximum donation. It costs just $200 to file and create an LLC, and each LLC can donate as a separate individual. One New York City developer has used the LLC loophole to pour over $13 million into campaign coffers since 2000.

Fixing this loophole is simple—in fact, Brooklyn Democrat Dan Squadron proposed a bill to do just that, but it was upstate Republicans in the Senate who effectively killed the effort, including the chair of the Corporations Committee Mike Ranzenhofer (R-East Amherst).

On Monday, the Buffalo News’ Denise Jewell Gee wrote that there are only 17 days to call your legislators to get the LLC loophole closed, but she omitted the local connection.

Not only did Ranzenhofer shut down Squadron’s bill to close the LLC loophole, but Ranzenhofer got $94,000 from Glenwood, the company whose various and sundry LLCs, led by Leonard Litwin, have contributed $1,000,000 to Governor Cuomo using 19 individual LLCs. Litwin and Glenwood are linked to the Sheldon Silver criminal probe, as well. It was reported yesterday that the Cuomo Administration cited an ongoing federal probe into the state’s housing finance agency relating to loans made to Litwin’s company. It is as if all of Albany is under investigation, or cooperating with an ongoing one.

Rural and suburban Democrats, naturally, have a difficult time recruiting candidates to run against Ranzenhofer to begin with, but who would want to bother when Ranzenhofer can pull in that much money from just one allegedly corrupt company, and shuts down any effort to close the LLC loophole as part of his official duties? Why is Ranzenhofer getting a pass from local media on his connection to Litwin and Glenwood, and his blatant blocking of Squadron’s effort to eliminate the corrupt/ing LLC loophole? Here it is:

It becomes more and more obvious that public financing of elections is the only way to clean up this state.

Albany corruption is a bipartisan problem with easy solutions that are being blocked in an equally bipartisan manner. Ranzenhofer has been moistening legislative seats for 20+ years, accumulating state benefits and pensions without accomplishing much of anything. The fact that he’s actively blocking even the most basic and uncontroversial Albany reforms should lead to his removal from elected office. Reform or get out of the way.

Preetsmas: Tentacles Spreading

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pigeonThe Buffalo News reports that one of the top donors to Steve Pigeon’s and Kristy Mazurek’s “WNY Progressive Caucus” has been in big trouble lately.

Aaron J. Pierce, a Seneca owner of an online cigarette business and a munitions factory,

• In August 2013, a Pierce company called AJ’s Candy & Tobacco was charged – with 17 other defendants – with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and contraband cigarette trafficking. Federal prosecutors said AJ’s Candy was one of several Native American tobacco companies from Western New York that saved hundreds of thousands of dollars by illegally buying and reselling “unstamped” cigarettes.

AJ’s Candy and other companies saved themselves $4.35 a pack by illegally buying cigarettes from a Missouri company that had not paid New York state excise taxes, prosecutors charged.

Court papers show that, last August, AJ’s Candy & Tobacco was sentenced after taking a corporate guilty plea, admitting to felony charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and contraband cigarette trafficking. The company agreed to pay just over $1 million in fines, judgments and restitution. The company was put on probation for two years. Pierce – who signed the plea agreement on the company’s behalf – agreed that the company would not sell any cigarettes except those made by his own companies for two years.

The charges against AJ’s Candy & Tobacco and 17 other defendants followed a lengthy undercover investigation by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives. The defendants in the case purchased a total of $17 million in illegally untaxed cigarettes during the undercover probe, said U.S. Attorney Tammy Dickenson, in Kansas City, Mo.

• In April of this year, Pierce and another of his companies – AJ’s Wholesale LLC of Irving – agreed to pay $400,000 to federal prosecutors in Buffalo to settle a non-criminal forfeiture case.

Federal prosecutors filed the forfeiture action against Pierce and AJ’s Wholesale in February, after ATF agents determined that AJ’s unlawfully bought and resold more than 403,000 cartons of untaxed cigarettes between September 2012 and January 2013, Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard D. Kaufman said in court papers.

A court order directing Pierce and AJ’s Wholesale to pay $400,000 to the federal government was signed by District Judge Richard J. Arcara on April 19. Another document, called a “stipulation for settlement and forfeiture,” was signed by Pierce and Pigeon – acting as an attorney for Pierce – on March 24.

AJ’s Wholesale, the company involved in the $400,000 forfeiture action, is the same Pierce company that donated $30,000 to Pigeon’s PAC in September 2013, government documents show.

Pierce is also a big donor to Assemblyman Mickey Kearns – so much so that Kearns had a ballpark named after Pierce.

When this all gets written up and we know all the ins and outs, remember that the question is where the money came from to fund the WNYPC. It was rumored to be Seneca money, and the evidence is mounting that this is true. Pierce’s quoted lawyer – Ed Betz – is a close associate of Pigeon protege Jack O’Donnell, and was hired as counsel for the Erie County Water Authority when O’Donnell was a commissioner.

Also, in case you missed it, Ken Kruly’s blog has a list of the lawyers all the targets of the Preetsmas probe have retained,

  • Steve Pigeon – represented by Dennis Vacco and Paul Cambria
  • Steve Casey – represented by Rod Personius
  • Chris Grant – represented by Thomas Eoannou
  • Tim Kennedy – represented by Terry Connors
  • Kristi Mazurek – represented by Joel Daniels

That reads like a who’s who of local lawyers you hire when you’re accused of really, really serious stuff. Also – Tim Kennedy?!

So far, the only thing missing is how the Albany-based accused cult NXIVM fits into all of this. Because I’m convinced that this investigation’s scope and timeframe is much wider than is being reported.

Schneiderman Tackles Corruption

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Earlier this week Attorney General Eric Schneiderman proposed a sweeping set of reforms to New York’s byzantine and minimally ethical election and campaign finance regulations. What you should pay attention to is this detail: every year, your candidates for state legislature promise to clean up that city’s political cesspool. They punctuate this all of this with caricatures of indicted former Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and indicted former Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos. They call Skelos a “RINO”, or they promise to free the Assembly from Silver’s corrupt fingers.

When they actually get there, however, none of this happens. A couple of exceptions include current Buffalo Comptroller Mark Schroeder and Assemblyman Mickey Kearns, both of whom refused to back Silver as speaker. When Governor Andrew Cuomo proposed milquetoast pseudoreforms in 2014 and 2015, the few that mattered he negotiated away with the other men in the budget negotiation room. In fact, he went so far as to simply shut down the Moreland Commission he created to examine corruption and make recommendations to end it.

There exists no political will or serious push to undertake the sorts of reforms that Albany needs to become a little less like a dictatorial junta and a little more like a deliberative representative legislative entity.

When your state capital has to rely on the U.S. Attorney who handles a completely different geographical jurisdiction – the Southern District of New York – to prosecute corrupt politicians, you know your problem is more than just trivial.

Attorney General Schneiderman’s proposal, therefore, provides Albany with a way to fix itself before it’s too late. But there’s a weak link here – all of those Albany pols who promised you they’d clean up the state house if you elected them to – what, their 20th term of office – are the ones who would need to propose, debate, and pass any such legislation. It’s not a sexy law that results in any ribbon-cuttings back home, so don’t hold your breath.

Schneiderman outlined his proposal in an op-ed published on May 26th. Noting that 30 state officials and legislators have left office due to criminal or ethical breaches since 2000, he notes that the indictments of Silver and Skelos should serve as an acute wake-up call. Schneiderman notes that he and state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli have prosecuted 60 electeds and their “cronies” in just the past four years – an untenable and frankly outrageous figure. His proposed law, the…

End New York Corruption Now Act — dramatically lowers contribution limits, sharply restricts contributions by lobbyists, closes donation loopholes so big you can drive a Mack truck through them, and provides matching funds for small contributions to offset the power of mega-donors.

It expands the tools available to state prosecutors to investigate and prosecute public corruption.

It ends a system that allows outside employment income for legislators, who should have no “clients” other than the people of New York. In turn, they would be paid like the full-time professionals they are and get a salary increase. I have also proposed a constitutional amendment to change the period between legislative elections from two to four years, to create at least some time for members of the Assembly and Senate to focus on governing first, and politics second.

These are reforms worth considering. Why this, and why now?

“Every year, more or less, for the past five or six years there have been ethics reform packages introduced and passed in Albany,” he said. “And every year or so there’s a press conference and they say, ‘We have made fundamental reforms; we have cleaned this up.’ And then there are more scandals and there’s more outrage, and it’s clear that they didn’t work.”

“I’m done with advocating for incremental reforms — it’s time for us to be bold,” he said.

If you need any more proof, consider that the new Senate Majority Leader John Flanagan recently said that his conference wasn’t going to bother looking into ethics reforms. Shrug.

One of the Schneiderman’s proposed reforms would close what’s called the “LLC loophole”. This legal defect enables politicians to raise massive sums of campaign cash that is difficult, if not impossible, to trace. For donors, it’s an easy way to (a) donate cash without leaving easily identifiable fingerprints; and/or (b) completely bypass and ignore the mandatory maximum donation. It costs just $200 to file and create an LLC, and each LLC can donate as a separate individual. One New York City developer has used the LLC loophole to pour over $13 million into campaign coffers since 2000. Fixing this loophole is simple – in fact, Brooklyn Democrat Dan Squadron proposed a bill to do just that, but it was upstate Republicans in the Senate who effectively killed the effort, including the chair of the Corporations Committee Mike Ranzenhofer (R-East Amherst).

So much for the tired upstate memes about corrupt downstate legislators, right?

Squadron’s bill would…

…treat LLCs like corporations or other joint-stock entities, which have $5,000 annual donation limits. Under a current state Board of Elections ruling, each of a developer’s LLCs can give up to $150,000 each annually, the same as a single individual.

The Assembly passed a bill similar to Squadron’s earlier this May, and you can watch Ranzenhofer’s committee stall the Senate version on YouTube.

Schneiderman’s proposal revives Squadron’s effort, and bans legislators from earning outside income, turning them into full-time professional legislators. The current salary approaches $90,000, plus per diems, and as much as we in New York hear from short-sighted tea partiers about how veteran teachers who earn similar amounts are dramatically overpaid, I’m sure we can dispense with any potential complaints about legislators’ earnings. Issues surrounding putside income helped put handcuffs on Sheldon Silver. The Attorney General’s proposed law would go further still, making it a felony to use one’s public power for personal gain. He would abolish “housekeeping accounts” that are ostensibly used for campaign overhead, but have no contribution limits and are ripe for abuse. It would also tighten rules on campaign consultants’ ability to then lobby the people they helped elect.

The glaring thing missing from Schneiderman’s proposals is something that New York needs to very carefully consider – abolition of our corrupt and needless system of “electoral fusion”. New York is one of only eight states that still allow multiple parties to cross-endorse the same candidate for office. It just shouldn’t be – whether we’re talking about the so-called “Independence” fusion Party, whose raison d’etre is patronage, and also to trick unawary voters who intended to register as what New York calls “unenrolled”; the “Conservative” fusion Party, whose platform planks are as set in stone as the party’s options for patronage and advancement, or the “Working Families” Party, which largely promotes the interests of organized labor.

While each fusion party claims that it serves some legitimate electoral purpose, the Independence fusion Party is almost laughably corrupt. It bears repeating that electoral fusion is awful. It is the root of very many evils. It allows candidates and other connected individuals to manipulate elections in order to maximize political power and monetary return through patronage for hangers-on. There are just over 13,000 Erie County voters registered in the Conservative Party – there is no rational way that party’s Erie County committee chairman Ralph Lorigo should wield the power he does. There was no way a barber from Springville – Tony Orsini – should have been a kingmaker. The statewide Independence Party was so angry about being manipulated by Democrats who were using it to trick low-information voters who thought they were voting for a small-i “independent” that they decided to become a wholly owned subsidiary of the state Republican Committee.

Electoral fusion is constantly being manipulated by bad people for bad reasons. It is used as a shield against some fantastical electoral rigor whereby a (R) will never color in the box for a (D) and vice-versa. It is used as a sword against people who don’t play ball with very petty people. Schneiderman’s proposed bill is worth advocating for and supporting. Even piecemeal reform is an improvement over our untenable status quo.

Because it doesn’t matter if you’re a Democrat or a Republican in Albany – that’s not remotely what matters. The only thing that matters is money, power, and control. Who owns or owes whom is the name of the game, whether it’s big donors with multiple LLCs or some microscopically small party line that lends the words “independent” or “conservative” to a candidate’s effort.

We know what the problems are, and we even know how to fix them. It’s time that our Albany pols become a bit more self-aware and actually – for once – think of the greater good.

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