Soares’ Aide Asked Spitzer’s Office For OK To Release Troopergate Statement
Well, if you were looking for a link that showed Albany County District Attorney David Soares orchestrated his highly criticized investigation with Gov. Eliot Spitzer, the evidence may be in Exhibit #166.
The Public Integrity Commission’s report provides an email to Christine Anderson, Spitzer’s former communications director, from Soares’ aide Richard Arthur that asks for Spitzer’s office permission to send ou
t a statement on Troopergate on July 23, 2007.
“DA Soares asked me to run this by you prior to our releasing it,” the email from Arthur to Anderson states. “Since we’re getting pounded by the press, we would like to get this out soon. Thanks. Richard Arthur, press person for the day while Heather is at a conference.”
Anderson then forwarded the email to five of Spitzer’s top aides, asking them “Everyone ok with this? I want to get back to them ASAP.”
The draft statement from Soares was to be released the same day Attorney General Andrew Cuomo released his report on Troopergate that found criminal wrongdoing.
Soares’s statement was to say that “we have found no basis for criminal prosecution. We concur with the conclusion of the attorney general’s report that existing state is “porous” and needs to be clarified to protect the interests of the people.”
Ultimately, that was the findings of Soares’ investigation, but those findings didn’t come out until September.
So while Soares’ insists his probe was independent of Spitzer’s office, this damning document suggests otherwise.
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EVERY damned time these pols are caught dead to rights in a misdemeanor or potential felony situation, the overseeing authority says that existing law has to be “clarified in the interest of the people,” and then they move on with (monkey) business as usual. This, throughout history, is what causes revolutions, friends. Soars continues the tradition, and this bogus County Board’s “Special Committee” is in the process of doing that exact same thing in White Plains right now.
The poor Times-Union hasn’t been the same since Dan Lynch was managing editor and columnist there. It was actually a pretty good paper, for a Hearst paper, in the late 1980s and early ‘90s, during Lynch’s prime.
You can be sure that Lynch would have gone after Soares as much as he would have Spitzer. In Dan Lynch’s time at the T-U, he helped send to Pennsylvania a county exec over graft involving the Pepsi Center.
Now, the T-U is a cozy collaborator with local officials. Sad. Like being back in Daniel Ortega’s Nicaragua, where his Sandanistas closed opposition newspapers.
hi, andar here, i just read your post. i like very much. agree to you, sir.
it is an abdication of his oath of office to ask
another branch of government that he is investigating
for permission to do anything…and certainly for permission to release such a crucial report…the
da is a supposed to be a constitutional officer
not a wholly owned subsidiary of a powerful governor
of his own party