New York’s attorney general played a key part when the Moreland Commission was announced last year. Not only did he choose more than a third of the people who would become members, he later deputized the entire panel.
But following a public appearance Friday, he announced, well, he would not be saying anything about the state’s top corruption case — save to confirm he was cooperating with US Attorney Preet Bharara.
Now, the attorney general isn’t usually so reticent or deferential. When JP Morgan was being looted in a settlement with the Justice Department, Schneiderman was happy to be in front of the microphones talking about “more big paydays to come.”
True, state law limits Schneiderman’s ability to take on Albany’s corruption. And if that’s what’s holding him back on Moreland, he should say so.
After all, the original release announcing Moreland made clear that it had the authority to “promptly communicate any evidence of violations of existing laws to the appropriate law enforcement agencies, including the Attorney General.”
It also declared one of Moreland’s responsibilities was to review “the adequacy of existing state laws, regulations and procedures involving unlawful misconduct by public officials.”
The great irony is that Cuomo himself offers a good precedent for what a determined attorney general might do.
As AG in 2007, he released a damning report of then-Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s use of the state police to smear the state Senate majority leader. It didn’t lead to Spitzer’s resignation, but it was embarrassing enough to leave Spitzer a de facto lame duck until prostitution charges eventually forced him out of office.
What we have now is potentially a much bigger scandal, with a much broader reach, involving players at the heart of Albany’s power structure. Yet the state’s top lawman has gone mute.
Some profile in courage.