Vito probe closed

From the NY Post:

State Assemblyman Vito Lopez, who was accused of groping young female staffers, is not expected to be charged criminally following a months-long investigation, The Post has learned.

Staten Island District Attorney Dan Donovan, who is operating as a special prosecutor, is expected to announce today that his investigation didn’t find enough evidence to charge Lopez, sources told The Post.

The harassment allegations lodged by two Lopez staffers last summer led to the revelation that Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver had quietly authorized a payment of $103,000 in taxpayer funds to settle previous allegations by two other women against Lopez.

The controversy rocked the state’s political hierarchy and sparked an investigation by the state’s Joint Commission on Public Ethics.

In February, the commission issued a scathing 58-page report to the Legislative Ethics Commission and Donovan, who asked the LEC not to release it until his investigation into the allegations was finished.

With Donovan’s probe complete, the LEC is expected to release the report as early as today. The report was so explicit in outlining how Silver’s staff handled the allegations that members of the LEC asked JCOPE to redact it.

From the Politicker:

Although Assemblyman Vito Lopez was cleared of criminal charges today, the same can not be said of a highly-revealing report from the New York State Joint Commission on Public Ethics–which concluded that Mr. Lopez fostered a shockingly sordid work environment in clear violation of official standards of conduct.

In the scathing 68-page report, Mr. Lopez–who was stripped of his powerful committee chairmanship and his position atop the Brooklyn Democratic Party after sexual harassment allegations first surfaced last year—engaged in such acts as hanging mistletoe in his district office and forcibly kissing a staffer, shoving his hand “all the way up” the inner thigh of another staffer and more. Mr. Lopez has insisted he’s done nothing wrong.

With minimal paraphrasing, Politicker has compiled some of the most shocking findings detailed in the JCOPE report...