Manhattan US Attorney Preet Bharara on Tuesday promised that more state corruption cases are in the offing after mocking Albany’s “three men in the room” decision-making and noting that Sheldon Silver has been deposed as Assembly speaker.
Bharara sidestepped a question on whether the other two men in the room — Gov. Cuomo and Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos — would also be knocked out by scandal.
The feds are investigating Cuomo’s abrupt closing of his own Moreland Commission to Combat Public Corruption and Skelos’ dealings with a law firm that paid him between $150,000 to $250,000 last year.
“Membership of the room seems to be changing. It changed last week when a new Assembly speaker was put into power,” Bharara said in an interview with MSNBC’s Ari Melber.
Bharara filed a criminal complaint alleging Silver used his powerful position to amass millions of dollars in kickbacks through two law firms.
“We have a number of investigations going on. And we’ve had them for a long time,” Bharara added.
“It doesn’t seem like business will be abating any time soon in the public-corruption department.”
Speaking more broadly about the culture of Albany, Bharara said that the number of legislators who’ve been arrested recently for corruption should serve as a wake-up call.
“There are a lot of people who go into public service and are in for the right reasons and to do the right thing,” Bharara said.
At the same time, he noted that lawmakers “are more likely to be arrested as a state senator in New York than you are to be turned out at the polls.
And when you have a degree of corruption that is that deep and pervasive and frequent, that’s a big problem.”
In the past decade, more than 30 state officeholders have been convicted of crimes, sanctioned or accused of wrongdoing.
In the MSNBC interview, Bharara also took a jab at Cuomo’s claim last year he couldn’t discuss the Moreland Commission on advice of the US Attorney’s office.
“As I believe the US attorney has made it clear that ongoing public dialogue is not helpful to this investigation, we will have no additional comment on the matter,” Cuomo said in July.
He has commented since then.
But Bharara said the governor had no reason to zip it up last year.
“I don’t think that’s true because I’ve heard comments attributed to the governor,” he said.
“People shouldn’t be talking to potential federal witnesses in a case when the prosecutor and the FBI and other investigators are looking at something. But I don’t think I, or anyone else, ever said any particular person shouldn’t be talking about how he or she made decisions publicly.”