If Democrats are moving their lips, they’re projecting.
My rule of thumb for understanding politics: If Democrats are moving their lips, they’re projecting. That’s why it was impossible not to chuckle yesterday upon hearing Andrew Cuomo grouse, “You can’t use a subpoena or the threat of investigation to leverage a person.”
New York’s faux tough-guy and notorious crybaby governor was whining because state lawmakers are understandably livid, to the point of stepping up their probes, over his tragic mishandling of COVID in nursing homes, and his administration’s assiduous cover-up thereof. Turns out legislators were less than dazzled by top Cuomo aide Melissa DeRosa’s rationalization that the administration had no choice but to mislead Albany about death-toll data because it was trying to conceal the same information from the Justice Department in Washington.
As our Brittany Bernstein reports regarding another of the diva’s press briefings Monday, Cuomo pined that when investigators coerce information by subpoena and the threat of more investigating, “That’s a crime, it’s called abuse of process, it’s called extortion.”
Well, actually, no, it’s not. And no one knows that better than the governor, who when not investigating has spent much of his career fending off investigators.
Extortion is the wrongful use of intimidation to obtain property from a person with that person’s ostensible consent. Extortion under color of official right happens when a government official exploits his authority – the damage it empowers him to do – in this manner. That, in essence, is abuse of process: the exploitation of investigative procedures, not for legitimate inquiries, but to squeeze the people under scrutiny to do or not do something – like, I know this hard to imagine, but just hypothetically of course, think of a presidential administration that might sic the IRS on its political opponents to impede them from mobilizing against its policies.
In marked contrast, when a legislative panel or law-enforcement agency, in furtherance of an inquiry in the public interest, issues subpoenas backed by the power of a court to order compliance on pain of contempt sanctions, that is not extortion. It is the conducting of an investigation – it is the process, not abuse of the process.
A lawyer for nearly 40 years, Governor Cuomo was, in his early career, an assistant district attorney conducting investigations and criminal prosecutions. In fact, he was later New York’s attorney general. His gubernatorial stint has including heavy-handedly interfering with an anti-corruption panel (the Moreland Commission) to steer it away from political allies. In 2018, his top aide and confidant, Joseph Percoco was sentenced to six years’ imprisonment on federal felony corruption convictions involving receipt of hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes.
By the way, the backbone of the case against Percoco was the testimony of lobbyist Todd Howe, a longtime Cuomo confidant who had worked in the gubernatorial administration of the current governor’s father. When Andrew Cuomo was HUD secretary during the Clinton administration, Howe worked for him, and his lobbyist living became incredibly lucrative when a Cuomo, once again, was ensconced in the governor’s mansion.
Howe eventually pled guilty to eight felony corruption counts. He avoided prison, though, by cooperating with prosecutors. Or, as Governor Cuomo might put it these days, when government attorneys leveraged him with the threat of further investigation.
Rumor has it that the extortionate feds may even have used a subpoena.