A federal judge rejected ex-state Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver’s third try to get his corruption charges tossed out, sarcastically noting Friday that the allegations in his indictment “do not make Silver look like a Boy Scout.”
The 71-year-old Democrat was arrested in January for an alleged long-running $4 million bribery and kickback scheme.
“None of Silver’s arguments is persuasive,” Manhattan federal Judge Valerie Caproni wrote in her decision.
Caproni rejected Silver’s argument that the bribes the government charged him with taking were really nothing more than conflicts-of-interest issues he should have disclosed.
“The fact that the payments Silver allegedly received as ‘bribes’ or ‘kickbacks’ were funneled through entities in which he had an undisclosed interest does not transform the bribery or kickback schemes into ‘undisclosed conflict-of-interest’ schemes,” the judge wrote.
Silver, who still holds his Assembly seat, is set to go to trial in November.