Carl,
That's precisely what Cuomo's Governorship has been like. But last year, his
utterances regarding the virus were so different from Trump's, that for a
while, he became everyone's hero and people were even talking about his running
for President in 2024. But basically, he's been functioning like a Mafia boss
ever since he became Governor.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Friday, March 19, 2021 4:24 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: one more thing about Cuomo
On 3/19/21, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
The person whom he put in charge of Covid relief, who is supposed toIf true there is an undercurrent that sounds a bit like a page from the Mafia
be providing all of the counties in New York State with vaccine,
called county executives to ask if they support Cuomo as a quid pro
quo before providing the vaccine to them for their residents.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Miriam Vieni
Sent: Friday, March 19, 2021 9:37 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Can Cyrus Vance, Jr., Nail Trump?
Yes, but there's a whole lot more than that. You might also listen to
the Slate podcast, What's Next for Thursday. There are also articles
that I didn't post to the list because I didn't think people would be
interested in New York. But the fact is that Cuomo has been a bastard
from the day he was elected governor, serving his Wall Street buddies
and making alliances with Republican legislators. He has been ruthless
in getting rid of anyone whom he sees as an enemy which means anyone
who represents the working class of New York. He lied to the Working
Families Party and he set up something called the Women's Party one
year, to confuse people about candidates. Last year, he insisted that
hospitals send Covid patients to nursing homes that were unprepared to
care for them so they wouldn't be counted in the statistics. Last year
he cut funding for medical services, as well as other services in New
York. He has refused to raise taxes on the wealthy. We have a tiny
sales tax on stock sales, .1%, which would give the state much needed
money for the things it needs. The tax has been in effect since 1905.
But since the 1980's, it has been rebated, not collected. He could
have reversed that practice and collected this tax which would barely
affect all those wealthy folks who do all that speedy stock trading in
order to make billions and it would help New Yorkers tremendously. He
refused. That's aside from all of the women he's apparently been
molesting, many of whom he met at Trump's parties.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Frank Ventura
Sent: Thursday, March 18, 2021 11:20 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Can Cyrus Vance, Jr., Nail Trump?
Miriam, for decades Trump was considered the King of the Hill. When
you are the King you demand everyone and anyone befriends you, hail to the
chief.
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Miriam Vieni
Sent: Thursday, March 18, 2021 7:06 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Can Cyrus Vance, Jr., Nail Trump?
See if you can find the podcast of Wednesday night's Flashpoints.
There's a section in which Cuomo's functioning as governor is described in
detail.
One
of the intersting facts is that he was a friend of Donald Trump.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Frank Ventura
Sent: Thursday, March 18, 2021 5:33 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Can Cyrus Vance, Jr., Nail Trump?
The canceling of NY's governor essentially puts an end to this
investigation of Trump as the district attorneys serve at the pleasure
of the governor.
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Miriam Vieni
Sent: Friday, March 12, 2021 9:21 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Can Cyrus Vance, Jr., Nail Trump?
Can Cyrus Vance, Jr., Nail Trump?
By Jane Mayer, The New Yorker
12 March 21
Insiders say that the Manhattan District Attorney's investigation has
dramatically intensified since the former President left office. "It's
like night and day," says one. According to another, "They mean business."
On February 22nd, in an office in White Plains, two lawyers handed
over a hard drive to a Manhattan Assistant District Attorney, who,
along with two investigators, had driven up from New York City in a heavy
snowstorm.
Although the exchange didn't look momentous, it set in motion the next
phase of one of the most significant legal showdowns in American
history. Hours earlier, the Supreme Court had ordered former President
Donald Trump to comply with a subpoena for nearly a decade's worth of
private financial records, including his tax returns. The subpoena had
been issued by Cyrus Vance, Jr., the Manhattan District Attorney, who
is leading the first, and larger, of two known probes into potential
criminal misconduct by Trump.
The
second was opened, last month, by a county prosecutor in Georgia, who
is investigating Trump's efforts to undermine that state's election results.
Vance is a famously low-key prosecutor, but he has been waging a
ferocious battle. His subpoena required Trump's accounting firm,
Mazars U.S.A., to turn over millions of pages of personal and
corporate records, dating from
2011 to 2019, that Trump had withheld from prosecutors and the public.
Before Trump was elected, in 2016, he promised to release his tax
records, as every other modern President has done, and he repeated
that promise after taking office. Instead, he went to extraordinary
lengths to hide the documents. The subpoena will finally give legal
authorities a clear look at the former President's opaque business
empire, helping them to determine whether he committed any financial
crimes. After Vance's victory at the Supreme Court, he released a
typically buttoned-up statement: "The work continues."
If the tax records contain major revelations, the public probably
won't learn about them anytime soon: the information will likely be
kept secret unless criminal charges are filed. The hard drive-which
includes potentially revealing notes showing how Trump and his
accountants arrived at their tax numbers-is believed to be locked in a
high-security annex in lower Manhattan. A spokesman for the Manhattan
District Attorney's office declined to confirm the drive's
whereabouts, but people familiar with the office presume that it has
been secured in a radio-frequency-isolation chamber in the Louis J.
Lefkowitz State Office Building, on Centre Street. The chamber is
protected by a double set of metal doors-the kind used in bank
vaults-and its walls are lined with what looks like glimmering copper
foil, to block remote attempts to tamper with digital evidence. It's a
modern equivalent of Tutankhamun's tomb.
Such extreme precautions are not surprising, given the nature of the case:
no previous President has been charged with a criminal offense. If
Trump, who remains the Republican Party's most popular potential
Presidential candidate and who recently signalled interest in another
run, is charged and convicted, he could end up serving a prison term
instead of a second White House term. Vance, the scion of a prominent
Democratic family-the kind of insider whom the arriviste Trump has
long resented-now has the power to rewrite Trump's place in history.
The journalist Jonathan Alter, a longtime friend of the D.A. and his
family, said, "Vance represents everything that Trump, when he was in
Queens with his nose pressed up against the glass in Manhattan, wanted
to conquer and destroy."
Vance's investigation, which appears to be focussed largely on
business practices that Trump engaged in before taking office, may
seem picayune in comparison with the outrageous offenses to democratic
norms that Trump committed as President. But the New York University
historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat, whose recent book "Strongmen" examines the
characteristics of antidemocratic rulers, told me, "If you don't
prosecute Trump, it sends the message that all that he did was
acceptable." She pointed out that strongmen typically "inhabit a gray
zone between illegal and legal for years"; corrupt acts of political
power are just an extension of their shady business practices.
"Trumpism isn't just about him," Ben-Ghiat went on. "It's a whole way
of being in the world. It's about secrecy, domination, trickery, and
fraud." She said, of Vance's probe, "It's symbolic for the public, and
very important to give the public a sense of accountability."
The legal clash between Vance and Trump has already tested the limits
of Presidential power. In 2019, Trump's lawyers argued that Presidents
were immune from criminal investigation and prosecution. Trump's
appellate counsel, William Consovoy, asserted that Trump couldn't be
prosecuted even if he fulfilled one of his most notorious campaign
boasts: "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot
somebody and I wouldn't lose any voters." Vance and his team rejected
this imperial claim, insisting that nobody is above the law. Trump, in
his effort to shield his financial records, took the fight all the way
to the Supreme Court-and then back again, after the case was
remanded-but the D.A.'s office won every round.
Vance, in a wide-ranging interview with me about his tenure as
Manhattan D.A., said, of appearing before the Supreme Court, "Truly, it was
like Mt.
Olympus." He declined to discuss the Trump case, as legal ethics
require, but he did disclose that he will not seek a fourth term, and
that he plans to retire from the D.A.'s office on December 31st. Eight
Democratic candidates are campaigning for the job, and, given the
city's liberal leanings, the victor of the Democratic primary, in
June, is all but guaranteed to win in November.
Even before the Trump case crossed his desk, Vance had largely decided
not to run for reëlection. He and his wife, Peggy McDonnell, felt that
he had done much of what he set out to do-among other successes, he
and his federal partners had secured judgments in a dozen major bank
cases, producing more than fourteen billion dollars in fines and
forfeitures. This inflow covers the D.A.'s annual budget many times
over, and also pays for a two-hundred-and-fifty-million-dollar fund
for community-justice programs.
But Vance is sixty-six, and the pressure of managing one of the
highest-profile prosecutorial offices in the country has been
wearying. "It turned out to be tougher than I thought it would be," he
conceded. He told me that, although his larger-than-life predecessor,
Robert Morgenthau, held the office for thirty-five years-retiring at
age ninety-he himself was ready to give the next generation a shot.
"There's nothing worse than a politician who doesn't know when to
leave," he said.
He had decided to keep his intentions quiet until after the Supreme
Court ruled on Trump's tax records, partly because he feared that some
of the more outspokenly anti-Trump candidates for his job might
alienate the conservative Justices. His decision to leave midcourse,
however, exposes the case to the political fray of an election. Some
candidates have already made inflammatory statements denouncing Trump,
and such rhetoric could complicate a prosecution.
The investigative phase of the Trump case will likely be complete
before Vance's term ends, leaving to him the crucial decision of
whether to bring criminal charges. But any trial would almost surely
rest in the hands of his successor. Daniel R. Alonso, Vance's former
top deputy, who is now a lawyer at Buckley, L.L.P., predicts that if
Trump is indicted "it will be nuclear war."