Get him

 

AMNY 

Federal investigators hit Mayor Eric Adams, City Hall and his 2021 campaign with a fresh round of subpoenas in connection with the federal corruption probe into his campaign, according to published reports Thursday evening.

The three subpoenas, which were served in July, requested materials including text messages, other forms of communication and documents, reported New York Times, which broke the story along with the New York Post.

Fabien Levy, deputy mayor for communications, did not confirm the reports, instead referring an amNewYork Metro reporter to Boyd Johnson and Brendan McGuire, Adams’ legal counsel in the investigation.

McGuire, in a statement that a spokesperson provided, indicated that the Adams campaign is cooperating with the federal probe after conducting “our own investigation of the areas we understand the U.S. Attorney’s Office has been reviewing.”

“Our investigation has included an evaluation of campaign documents, an analysis of tens of thousands of electronic communications, and witness interviews,” McGuire said. “To be clear, we have not identified any evidence of illegal conduct by the Mayor. To the contrary, we have identified extensive evidence undermining the reported theories of federal prosecution as to the Mayor, which we have voluntarily shared with the US Attorney. We continue to cooperate with the investigation and are in the process of responding to the recently issued subpoenas.”

Levy, in a statement, reiterated that the mayor is cooperating with federal investigators.

“As a former member of law enforcement, the mayor has been clear over the last nine months that he will cooperate with any investigation underway. Nothing has changed. He expects everyone to cooperate to swiftly bring this investigation to a close.”

The federal probe into Adams’ 2021 campaign first bursted into public view nine months ago when FBI agents raided the home of his former chief fundraiser: Brianna Suggs.

Fundraising blowback for Juan Anon

 

 Queens Chronicle

Beleaguered Assemblymember Juan Ardila (D-Maspeth) closed out the latest campaign finance filing period last week with less than $12,000 cash on hand, state records show. While an increase from last July, when he had $934.22 in cash on hand and had raised just $2,000 from one donor last February, his poor performance relative to his primary opponents, who have tens of thousands of dollars available, suggests his reelection bid may be feeling the effects of two women’s sexual assault allegations against him.

The end of the latest filing period provides Queens residents with the clearest financial picture of the race for Assembly District 37 thus far, and is the first since Ardila officially filed for reelection in November.

Ardila was accused of sexually assaulting two women at a 2015 party, allegations first reported by the Chronicle last March. Ardila denied the women’s accounts, and did not heed calls from many of his colleagues, as well as Gov. Hochul, for his resignation. Instead, he hired a lawyer to independently investigate the allegations and craft a report.

Ardila did not respond to the Chronicle’s requests for comment for this story by press time Wednesday.

In addition to becoming a pariah among many of his peers in Western Queens and in Albany as a result of the allegations, Ardila lost quite a bit of the financial support that had propelled him to victory in the 2022 Democratic primary, most notably from the Working Families Party and the Courage to Change PAC, a political action committee formed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-Bronx, Queens) designed to support progressive candidates. Both groups rescinded their endorsements of Ardila in March, and neither has donated money to him in his reelection bid. In 2022, the WFP gave his campaign $43,665 — the most of all of Ardila’s donors — while the Courage to Change PAC gave $4,700.

Since then, Ardila, who had only been in office some two and a half months when the accusations became public, has struggled to raise money for his re-election bid. State campaign finance records show Ardila finished the cycle with $11,844.32 cash on hand, thanks in part to a $2,000 loan he gave himself right before the filing deadline and a $1,500 contribution he made to his own campaign. Together, the two account for $3,500 in his account, or about 30 percent. His largest donation (not counting from himself) is $1,000 from a Sunnyside-based veterinary clinic.

 

Emily's race baiting friend

 

 

 

 

Looks like Emily Gallagher's pay to play urbanish trivia game went well last week. But yesterday, on MLK day, she told her gentry followers to fund a Black man running for Assembly in East New York.

 

 Going by this odd looking photo, Mr Alleyne has a unique way of showing how he embodies the iconic civil rights leader values by his body language. Because that is sign language for the word "cracker". 

 

 

 

This sort of makes that notorious OK sign a little less racist now.

 

         

Update: Keron lost to the Brooklyn Machine candidate in a blow out.

The flaw in the matching funds law

Queens Eagle 

After taking in more than $134,000 in public matching funds, Moumita Ahmed received about 15 percent of the vote and finished a distant second in a February special election for Council District 24. Earlier this month, she received another $52,569 in taxpayer cash as she runs in the June primary. 

In the process, Ahmed’s campaign has emerged as something of an avatar for opposition to the city’s current public matching funds system, which has so far poured $26,657,242 into candidates’ campaign accounts, with primary day still two months away.

“We really need to reevaluate the prudence of spending public funds at these rates for what I believe are vanity projects,” said political strategist Patrick Jenkins.

Jenkins specifically questioned candidates who receive matching funds and spend a significant amount of money on out-of-state consultants. Ahmed, for example, paid a South Carolina-based consulting firm more than $95,000 leading up to the special.

“There should be some kinds of procurement rules,” Jenkins said.

This year’s council candidates are eligible for matching funds if they receive 75 contributions of between $10 and $1,000 from people who live in the districts they hope to represent. The first $175 of those qualifying contributions are eligible for an eight-to-one match, meaning a $10 contribution from a would-be constituent is worth $90. 

The program is intended to incentivize small-dollar contributions from everyday New Yorkers, rather than the wealthy or influential special interests.

But critics say some candidates are exploiting the program to raise their own profiles in quixotic quests for public office.

“For $52,569 this city can pay for a voucher to house a family of four for two years, Instead it’s doling out matching funds to candidates who get more Twitter likes then votes and claim there’s a conspiracy to stop them,” tweeted Jay Martin, executive director of the Community Housing Improvement Program after Ahmed shared news about her latest matching funds haul.

NY Post 

Candidate Shaun Donovan’s long-shot bid to replace Mayor Bill de Blasio next year got a financial shot in the arm Thursday when the Campaign Finance Board voted to award nearly $1.5 million in public matching funds after receiving sworn statements that a super PAC bankrolled by his dad was not coordinating with his campaign.

Last week, the CFB withheld matching funds to Donovan after saying it was investigating the relationship between the campaign and an independent group seeking to boost the former Bloomberg and Obama insider’s flagging bid for City Hall.

Campaigns are barred from coordinating with outside groups.

Donovan’s father, Michael Donovan, donated $2 million to the pro-Donovan New Start NYC Super Pac.

Donovan served as housing director to former Mayor Mike Bloomberg and later served in the Obama Administration, first as housing secretary and then as budget director.

The CFB said Thursday it had received sworn affidavits from both Shaun and Michael Donovan assuring that there was no coordination between the campaign and the independent expenditure group, which is nearly entirely bankrolled by the candidate’s dad to aid his campaign.

“After reviewing additional information, including statements from Shaun and Michael Donovan, the Board voted to approve a public funds payment to the New Yorkers for Donovan campaign today. The campaign will be subject to an ongoing, post-election audit, just like all campaigns in this election,”. said CFB chairman Frederick Schaffer.

 This is total chaos. It's asinine that this money is being used during a pandemic.

Maya Wiley's advisory malfeasance extended to City Hall's official non-profit fund

 

 NY Daily News

Before Maya Wiley became an MSNBC commentator and candidate for mayor, her most public moments came when she fell under the media’s glare for her role advising Mayor de Blasio and his administration on how to raise money legally.

The unwanted attention started during the first three years of de Blasio’s first term and it continues to linger.

In 2015, in what may now seem like a prescient assessment, Wiley summed up her role as de Blasio’s legal counsel in a video posted online by his wife, Chirlane McCray.

“I’m Maya Wiley. I’m counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio, and that means I’m — I keep him out of jail,” she said jokingly. “I advise him on legal issues, but I’m also part of his senior team.”

De Blasio has so far avoided jail, despite allegations of fundraising malpractice. But now, about four months into Wiley’s run for mayor, exactly what role she played in counseling Team de Blasio — and in vetting donations to his cause — is still not entirely clear.

But documents obtained by the Daily News show that the part Wiley did play appears to be much more extensive than has previously been reported.

The newly unearthed records show that, aside from her connection to the controversial Campaign for One New York, Wiley also appears to have played a key part in vetting donors to the Mayor’s Fund to Advance NYC, a nonprofit dedicated to improving the lives of New Yorkers.

Wiley, who served as the mayor’s legal counsel for about two years, joined the de Blasio administration in the first year of his first term in office. Within months, she became involved in providing legal advice on how to ensure compliance with conflict-of-interest rules when it came to the Campaign for One New York, part of de Blasio’s fundraising apparatus.

The Campaign for One New York, also known as CONY, was established just weeks before de Blasio took office in 2014 and almost immediately began collecting donations to help promote his efforts to launch universal pre-K, widely regarded as his signature policy achievement in City Hall. After pre-K launched, the nonprofit took on a more general focus, but continued to raise — and spend — money to promote de Blasio’s priorities.

But it didn’t take long for CONY’s operation to come under scrutiny. Eventually, that led to probes from the city’s Department of Investigation, the Manhattan district attorney’s office and the state’s Joint Commission on Public Ethics.