Lawyer for Fund-Raisers Tied to de Blasio Fires Back at Elections Board
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Version 0 of 1. ALBANY — In a strongly worded response to a New York State Board of Elections report alleging illegal fund-raising activities by a team of people with close ties to Mayor Bill de Blasio, a lawyer for several of the implicated parties has accused the board of “a shocking lack of understanding or a complete disregard of the most fundamental aspects of the state’s election laws.” The letter, drafted by Laurence D. Laufer, a longtime campaign finance lawyer who also represents the mayor’s re-election campaign, came two days after accounts in the news media of a January report from Risa S. Sugarman, the board’s chief enforcement counsel. The report, which was confidential, found “willful and flagrant” violations of election law by a group of political operatives known as Team de Blasio, which was formed in 2014 to try to retake the State Senate for Democrats, who are in the minority in Albany’s upper chamber. According to Ms. Sugarman’s account, Team de Blasio tried to evade contribution limits by channeling hundreds of thousands of dollars through county and state campaign committees, which then disbursed money to three ultimately unsuccessful Senate campaigns. Such committees can receive larger donations — up to $102,300 — than individual candidates, who are limited to $11,000 per donor during a general election for the State Senate. The report was reviewed by the board’s four commissioners and forwarded to Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the Manhattan district attorney, prompting a criminal investigation that is being conducted with agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, who have been accompanying Mr. Vance’s investigators as they serve subpoenas and conduct interviews. But in a seven-page letter obtained by The New York Times, Mr. Laufer said the activities described by Ms. Sugarman in her report were “unquestionably authorized by the existing law.” “I am at a loss to understand any proper purpose that could have been served by a criminal referral,” Mr. Laufer wrote. Mr. Laufer also denounced the unauthorized release of Ms. Sugarman’s report to the press on Friday, saying the board’s inability to maintain confidentiality was “a complete dereliction of duty.” If the leak came from the board, he said, it amounted to “a highly prejudicial and perhaps politically motivated act.” Trying to bolster his assertion of a lack of confidentiality, Mr. Laufer cited past reports that Ms. Sugarman had included a press aide to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, the mayor’s fellow Democrat, in a 2014 email she had sent to election officials. But on Friday, Ms. Sugarman defended her work — “My career was based on conducting investigations fairly and independently,” she said in an interview — but declined to discuss any aspect of the de Blasio fund-raising inquiry, including the release of the report to the press, because of the confidential nature of her office’s investigations. Likewise, Douglas Kellner, one of the board’s four commissioners, said on Sunday that he could not comment on or acknowledge investigations or criminal referrals. But he agreed with some of Mr. Laufer’s concerns about the impact of the leak and about “how prejudicial the public comments have been” in its wake. Mr. Kellner, a Democrat, added that he and other commissioners had consistently criticized Ms. Sugarman for “what appears to be arbitrary selection of those who she determines to investigate.” “We have repeatedly expressed concerns that the independent enforcement counsel has not explained how she chooses which investigations to pursue,” he said. Ms. Sugarman has denied any influence from Mr. Cuomo — who nominated her to the board post and had previously employed her during his time as attorney general — or any other entity. “The work that I do here has nothing to do with where I came from,” she said on Friday, adding, “It just makes me chuckle when people say those kinds of things.” For Mr. Cuomo’s part, Dani Lever, a spokeswoman for the governor, said on Sunday that “the only things we know about the reported investigations by the U.S. attorney, district attorney and Board of Elections are what have been reported in the press.” The inquiry by Mr. Vance is just one of several parts of a broader inquiry that has cast a deep shadow in recent weeks over Mr. de Blasio’s administration. Those inquiries include a federal investigation into the mayor’s campaign fund-raising that partly focuses on two men — Jona S. Rechnitz and Jeremy Reichberg — who have raised money for Mr. de Blasio. The investigation is looking into whether the men received favorable municipal action in exchange for their support. The authorities were also examining allegations that they lavished gifts, meals and free trips on senior officials at the Police Department, several of whom have since been placed on modified duty or transferred to administrative duties. The two men and the police officials have not been charged with a crime, and Mr. de Blasio has said his administration will fully cooperate with investigators. In the case of the 2014 campaign, Mr. Laufer condemned Ms. Sugarman’s “novel, esoteric and chilling interpretation” of the actions of Team de Blasio, which included Emma Wolfe, a senior aide to the mayor, and Ross Offinger, the treasurer for the Campaign for One New York, a nonprofit created by Mr. de Blasio to support his agenda. According to Ms. Sugarman’s report, during the late days of the 2014 campaign, Team de Blasio arranged for large donations to be made — through Putnam and Ulster Counties’ Democratic committees and a state committee — for the sake of two incumbents locked in tight races: Cecilia F. Tkaczyk, who was running in a district that included part of Ulster, and Terry W. Gipson, whose district included part of Putnam. The group also arranged for more than $300,000 to be sent through the Putnam committee, which forwarded it to the campaign of Justin Wagner, who was seeking a Senate seat in the Hudson Valley. All three Democrats lost. Investigators said similar patterns existed with candidates running in Monroe and Erie Counties. Mr. Kellner said the key to determining if a crime occurred was whether the act of transferring the money to the campaign committees of individual candidates was separate from the act of transferring the money to the individual candidates. Doing both transactions as part of a single transaction, Mr. Kellner said, would be a violation of state election law and a felony if it was done “knowingly and willfully,” arguing that Mr. Laufer did not delve into that topic. “It would have been perfectly legal to make the contribution to the party committee and for the party committee to spend the money in support of the candidate,” he said, “and it would have been perfectly legal for the party committee to transfer funds to the candidates campaign committee. But if it was a single transaction, then that’s a violation.” |