Kathy Clown's hiring of Contractor Gadget Jr. has got herself in hot water

NY Post 

The son of a major Kathy Hochul donor was hired by her campaign right around the time his father hosted a fundraiser for the Democratic governor — and just weeks before the dad’s company scored what’s being called a “pay-to-play” deal to sell the state $637 million in overpriced COVID-19 tests.

James Tebele, 21, has a resume that starts with a 2016 summer internship at his dad Charlie’s New Jersey-based Digital Gadgets consumer technology company, which pivoted to selling masks, gowns, sanitizer, thermometers and at-home rapid tests during the pandemic.

Now a student at New York University’s Schack Institute of Real Estate, James Tebele began working for Hochul’s campaign as a finance intern in November — and appears to have risen up the ranks, or at least pay scale, of her campaign as his dad’s fundraising for the governor increased.

On Nov. 22, Charlie Tebele — whose family has donated over $300,000 to Hochul — spent $5,150 on food, decorations and servers for a Hochul fundraiser and his wife, Nancy Tebele, also donated $18,000 to the governor’s campaign that day, the Albany Times Union first reported earlier this month.

Just four days later, Hochul suspended competitive-bidding rules for the state’s purchase of COVID-19 supplies, leading to the first of two contracts awarded to Digital Gadgets for a total of 26 million test kits.

Despite the rapid confluence of events, and her campaign’s hiring of James Tebele, Hochul has maintained that she “was not aware that this was a company that had been supportive of me” — an assertion rejected and ridiculed by her critics.

“The governor attended an in-person fundraiser hosted by the donor and hired one of his family members, but claims she was unaware of any connection. It’s laughable,” Assembly Minority Leader Will Barclay (R-Fulton) said Wednesday.

The first contract — inked on Dec. 20 — charged taxpayers $13 per test, even though Hochul’s administration had recently struck a deal to buy similar tests from another supplier for just $5 each, according to the Times Union.

Digital Gadgets charged the state an average of $12.25 per test — costing taxpayers a total of $268 million more than if officials bought the “Carestart” tests directly from the manufacturer instead of using Charlie Tebele as a middleman, the Times Union said.

 NY Post

This is not the kind of national attention most governors seek.

Congressional Republicans are vowing to probe a $637 million alleged pay-to-play scheme involving Gov. Kathy Hochul and a deep-pocketed campaign donor if they retake the House of Representatives this November.

“As a taxpayer, it really pisses me off that my governor is paying twice as much for a product that other states are and that the money is going to one of her large donors,” Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-Staten Island-Brooklyn) told The Post Thursday.

“It smells so bad,” she added.

The vow comes amid growing calls for local, state and federal officials — who have remained silent about whether they will investigate — to probe how $300,000 in campaign cash to Hochul might have helped the New Jersey-based Digital Gadgets land the no-bid contract for 52 million COVID rapid tests, a deal first revealed by the Times Union this summer.

“With your duty to enforce federal laws and ensure fair and impartial administration of justice, we ask that you use your position within the Department of Justice to promote transparency in government spending and investigate this potential kickback scheme that has defrauded taxpayers millions of dollars,” reads a Sept. 26 letter to US Attorney General Merrick Garland from GOP members of Congress including Malliotakis and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-North Country).

 

Gerrymandering Nikki

 

 NY Post

Democrats who control the state Legislature are plotting to knock off Rep. Nicole Malliotakis — the only Republican member of New York City’s congressional delegation — by redrawing a legislative district to add liberal Brooklyn precincts to her Republican stronghold, sources told The Post Wednesday night.

The Democrat’s plan would drastically alter the 11th congressional district, which combines Staten Island, her political base, with some more conservative areas of southern Brooklyn, including Bay Ridge, Bath Beach and Dyker Heights.

Under the redistricting plan that would go into effect for elections later this year, the district would include Bay Ridge but then snake northwest and take in the more heavily liberal Democratic neighborhoods of Sunset Park, Red Hook, Gowanus, Windsor Terrace and Park Slope, legislative sources said.

“Those are big Democratic areas,” one legislative source said.

Legislative insiders said if a Democratic candidate can run up the score with 80 percent of the vote in the Brooklyn side of the district, he or she can win by capturing about 40 percent in more conservative Staten Island.

The 11th CD is considered a purple or bellwether district as currently constituted. 

 Malliotakis defeated one-term Democratic incumbent Max Rose in the 2020 elections, aided by a strong showing by former President Trump in the district. Rose is seeking the Democratic nominations again in a potential rematch.

Brooklyn Democrat Assemblyman Robert Carroll, whose district takes in all of Park Slope and who graduated from Xaverian HS in Bay Ridge and has family roots there, has told politicos he is considering running for the redrawn congressional seat, sources said.

The Democratic primary also includes Democratic socialist Brittany Ramos DeBarros, who, like Rose, is an Army veteran who served in Afghanistan.

Malliotakis told The Post she’s a victim of a partisan hit job. 

“The people of this district and the state of New York voted not once, but twice, for non-partisan redistricting. To gerrymander a blatantly partisan map dilutes the voice of my constituents, defies the will of New York’s voters, and is a direct assault on the state constitution,” Malliotakis said.

Rep. Malliotakis files lawsuit against Bill de Blasio's vaccine mandate and Youtube censors her announcement

 

Reclaim The Net

YouTube took down a video of Rep. Nicole Malliotakis unconditionally without warning or explanation.

The video consists of her news conference in which she announced her lawsuit against the Democrat mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio, for implementing a vaccination passport system in the city.

YouTube reinstated the video shortly after being contacted by Reclaim The Net.

Following De Blasio’s order for a COVID-19 Vaccine Passport mandate, Malliotakis has joined the fight against the affront to civil liberties.

The mayor wants to make it illegal for anyone without a vaccine passport to work at or patronize gyms, entertainment venues, and indoor restaurants.

Rep. Malliotakis issued a statement concerning the lawsuit challenging New York City’s vaccination regulations.

“The Mayor’s vaccine mandate is an overreach of government,” said the Representative for Brooklyn/Staten Island . “The government should not be imposing such a mandate on its people and small business owners.”

“We have received calls from countless individuals that we represent – both vaccinated and unvaccinated – who are concerned about sharing personal health information with individuals they don’t know, or fearing they will be left out of society because their doctors recommended they do not get vaccinated due to other medical issues.”

“It is beyond ridiculous that the government is mandating these already struggling small business owners to be the city’s vaccine police.”

Nicole Malliotakis is a congresswoman

 

AM NY

Republican Nicole Malliotakis has declared victory over Democratic incumbent Max Rose in the contentious congressional race in Staten Island and southern Brooklyn’s 11th District.

Malliotakis won just over 58 percent of in-person votes (127,213) in the swing district on Tuesday night, according to the Board of Elections’ unofficial election night results. Rose collected approximately 41 percent of in-person votes (90,560).

Malliotakis declared victory shortly after 10 pm Tuesday with a margin of about 36,000 votes — and little to no way of Rose catching up regardless of the close to 40,000 absentee ballots in the air.

Nicole wants to dump the dope

From CBS:

Republican mayoral candidate Nicole Malliotakis called on prosecutors to reopen a probe of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration Sunday – a mere two days ahead of the mayoral election.

As CBS2’s Hazel Sanchez reported, the state Assemblywoman and Republican mayoral candidate blasted de Blasio with more allegations of running a corrupt City Hall.

“People have a choice on Tuesday,” Malliotakis said. “Do they want to pay millions more in their tax dollars to defend a pay-to-play mayor, or do they want to join me in taking our city in a different direction?”

Nicole calls for fair property taxes

From AM-NY:

Republican mayoral hopeful Nicole Malliotakis on Thursday outlined her plans to overhaul New York City’s property tax system, saying that if elected, she would establish a bipartisan panel to develop reforms.

Malliotakis, speaking at a news conference on the steps of City Hall, pointed to differences between her property tax bill and that of incumbent Democrat Bill de Blasio to illustrate what she described as “inequities” that result from the city’s current property tax code.

Malliotakis, a state assemblywoman who lives on Staten Island, paid $5,521 in city property taxes on her home that has a market value of at $549,000, according to 2017 property tax records. Meanwhile, de Blasio paid $3,581 in taxes for his primary residence in Brooklyn that is valued at $1.97 million, according to property records.

Under the city’s current tax code, the city caps how much a property’s assessment can increase from year to year to 6 percent. Activists who have been calling for a change to the code say the current law benefits property owners in booming communities such as de Blasio’s Park Slope neighborhood, because those property owners end up paying proportionally less in taxes than property owners in other outerborough neighborhoods that are experiencing slower growth.

“Four years ago, Bill de Blasio ran on a platform of closing the gap in the ‘Tale of Two Cities’ but he has done nothing to close it and seems perfectly fine with lower income middle class New Yorkers subsidizing the homes of millionaires, including his own,” Malliotakis said.

If you didn't watch it, you didn't miss much

From the Daily News:

Tuesday evening's mayoral debate was a particularly putrid taste of small-d democracy these days in our overwhelmingly Democratic city: Loud, stupid and basically pointless.

There was Mayor Bill de Blasio, up 40-plus points in the polls and towering in every sense over Republican Nicole Malliotakis, who went on, and on, and on about how New York (where crime is in fact at a record low) is collapsing into its blood-soaked streets.

She in turn towered over general creep Bo Dietl, who spent the night interrupting her and hurling non-sequiturs — "MOOSE! JAIL REFORM! TOUGH COP! BO DIETL!" — and random insults at the mayor.

All this as the crowd brought in by the campaigns yelled, hissed and chanted, giving our system in which few people vote and few votes matter that bread-and-circuses feel.

De Blasio's first words set the tone: "You know sometimes there are elections--" "BOOOOOOO!!!!!!"

De Blasio opponent takes on project costs

From AM-NY:

Republican mayoral candidate Nicole Malliotakis and Democratic incumbent Bill de Blasio appear to have common ground on at least one issue — a proposed change to state law that would allow the city to streamline the process it uses to design and build projects.

Malliotakis, a state assemblywoman from Staten Island, speaking at a news conference in her home borough Thursday, outlined a series of proposals she said would save the city money and speed up long delayed infrastructure projects. The proposals are included in state legislation she co-sponsored this year, that failed to get approved by the legislature.

Under current law, the design phase and the construction phase of projects are contracted separately, which Malliotakis said had led to widespread delays and cost overruns that she argued could be prevented if contractors collaborated at the inception of a project.

“Current state law mandates a less efficient approach,” Malliotakis said.

To highlight the waste, she held her news conference in front of a proposed new city animal shelter that has yet to be completed five years after officials broke ground on the project. The new shelter was initially slated to cost $3.1 million, but has since increased to $8.2 million, Malliotakis said.

De Blasio has interesting priorities

From the NY Post:

Mayor de Blasio on Thursday skipped an NYPD swearing-in ceremony made somber by this week’s assassination of a cop — then hours later revealed he was busy preparing to jet off on a surprise trip to join leftist protesters at the G-20 summit in Germany.

Hizzoner’s overseas jaunt was kept under wraps until just 90 minutes before he took off from Newark Airport. A last-minute announcement said he “will attend several events surrounding the G-20 Summit, including Saturday’s Hamburg Zeigt Haltung rally.”

De Blasio will be the keynote speaker, organizers of the demonstration — Hamburg Shows Attitude — tweeted.

The mayor also made sure the free trip will include a visit with his son, Dante, a Yale University student who’s spending the summer on an internship in Berlin, a City Hall spokesman said.

Presumptive Republican challenger Nicole Malliotakis accused de Blasio of abandoning pressing issues in the Big Apple to pursue his progressive agenda in Europe.

“Unbelievable. Instead of jet-setting around the world, he should be here doing his job,” said the Staten Island assemblywoman. “A police officer was murdered, street homelessness has skyrocketed and people continue to get delayed on the trains.”

De Blasio suddenly in favor of more deportations

From DNA Info:

Mayor Bill de Blasio is willing to add to the list of 170 felony criminal offenses for which the city will work with federal authorities to deport perpetrators.

De Blasio — who has said cooperation with those crimes makes President Donald Trump's executive order threatening to pull funding from sanctuary cities redundant — made the statement during a budget hearing in Albany Monday as part of a testy exchange with Republican state Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis.

"So, for instance, if an individual here conducts sexual misconduct, forcible touching, sexual abuse in the second and third degree, grand larceny, welfare fraud, identity theft — this was just a small list of a much larger list in which the city refuses to comply with detainer requests from the federal government — why would you protect individuals who are here illegally committing these crimes?" she asked the mayor.

"If there are some offenses that we should add, we are willing to do that always," de Blasio replied.

From September 2014 to September 2016, New York City received 584 detainer requests from the federal government but only complied with 32, Malliotakis stated.

"My issue is, why would the mayor of the city of New York who is entrusted to protect the safety of our citizenry say that they're not going to comply with these detainer requests," the assemblywoman asked.

Malliotakis said she was concerned that offenses such as identity fraud, welfare fraud, forcible touching and grand larceny were seemingly not included. But the mayor believes many of those offenses overlap with what is listed and invited the assemblywoman to consult with the city's lawyers.

"When you come up with a list of 170 offenses, if there were several more that should be included, I'm perfectly happy to include them," de Blasio said.