Free at last! Free at last! Gov. Cuomo is now free to speak up in public about all his Moreland Commission dealings.
We have this from the US attorney himself. On MSNBC, Preet Bharara said this in reference to the governor and the ongoing criminal investigation: “I don’t think I or anyone else has ever said that any particular person shouldn’t be talking about how he or she made decisions publicly.”
In 2013, the governor set up the panel with great fanfare to probe Albany corruption. But last year, he disbanded it before it could finish its work. For months now, he’s refused to discuss it, because, he says, Bharara is investigating and won’t let him.
With the arrests of top Albany pols, and with Bharara having taken up the work Moreland wasn’t allowed to finish, New Yorkers would surely love to hear Cuomo explain why he did what he did.
Then again, he’s already talked about Moreland. Actually, double-talked: Once he said he shut the panel to save money; another time, that it was only meant as a way to pass an ethics bill. This week’s excuse? The probers got “stuck.”
Cuomo has also claimed the panel was independent — except when he was insisting it was “my commission, so he could “appoint” or “unappoint” members as he pleased.
In a New Yorker piece this week, he offers a gem to defend shutting the panel even though Bharara used its work to indict then-Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver: “If [former Rep.] Anthony Weiner shows his private parts, do you blame Obama?”
So how ’bout it, Gov. Cuomo? Anything you care to tell us now that Bharara says you’re free to do so?