Sunday, April 24, 2016

Scandal from NYC to Kingston

The New York State Board of Elections referred a potential criminal matter to the Manhattan District Attorney's Office allegedly involving NYC Mayor DeBlasio and 3 Democratic County Committees including Ulster County.

The allegations are basically that Mayor DeBlasio and his supporters funneled $1.2 million to 3 different Democrat County Committees with the express intent of bypassing individual donor limits for 3 State Senate races.

The limits for donations to a County Committee are much higher than for an individual candidate.  While the amounts donated were within the law, the portion that violates the law is if/when the donation was a sham and was actually directly intended for a particular candidate.

In Ulster County, the candidate was Cecelia Tkaczyk.  One of the most damning pieces of evidence is an email from Matthew Lerch, the Treasurer for Tkaczyk's campaign.  The email was sent to Hayes Clement, the treasurer for the Ulster County Democratic Committee.  The email said, "Has the check for 60K cleared?  Below is our banking info, we need the 60 transferred over ASAP please."

Why is this so damning?  Well, $60,000 is over 5 times the legal limit for a donation for the race.  Moreover, the email shows that the Tkaczyk campaign knew about the donation and knew that the donation was actually intended for them.

The interesting thing will be to see if what if any deals are made with people to build a case against DBlasio and his people.  Hayes Clement and Matthew Lerch are likely small fish and the Manhattan District Attorney's Office is looking to land a whale.





10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Some of that dirty money may have found its way to the election of steve noble for mayor because Cecelia Tkaczyk donated to his campaign. Whoops. Can we have a redo please?

Anonymous said...

so you think nothing should happen to Cardinale?

Richard T. Cahill Jr. said...

Did not say that.

I want to see an investigation done and justice served. As to who goes to jail or gets punished, let's see what a full investigation reveals.

Anonymous said...

Seems CSEA county unit president is doing some behind the scenes work for Mike Hein.
Mike Cimorelli was given a $7,000.00 a year raise into a position he is not qualified to do and is not made to do. Maybe he's Heins mule.

Anonymous said...

Cimorelli was seen walking the rail trail at 2pm yesterday April 25th. Why are we wasting taxpayer money on this Hein flunky. He is really upsetting the workforce. In times when everyone has to do more with less the men and women at information services have to pick up the slack for him. Hein needs to go and take this guy with him.

Anonymous said...

Where is your EVIDENCE for what you allege, 8:35 AM?

Anonymous said...

Some of that dirty money did find its way to the election of steve noble for mayor as Tkaczyk on two separate checks sent money to noble's home address totaling $1,500. What is baffling though is there is no trail of the Tkaczyk sponsored Facebook ads that kept circulating over and over. Did noble overlook this on his disclosure forms and hope that no one picked up on it?

Anonymous said...

This is flat out money laundering. And very badly implemented money laundering, at that.

kerfuffle said...

Meanwhile, Mr. Blaber wants to become a Commissioner of Deeds. Matter came before Law & Rules this month, but was eclipsed by the gun range topic. That guy's gonna be mayor one day.

Richard T. Cahill Jr. said...

Perhaps, but not in Kingston, NY.