I had already planned to write a little bit about Andrew Cuomo, who has been reliably reported to be a major dickhead (via Atrios, check out how Cuomo fucked New York City by shutting down the subway yesterday). We all know how Mario’s idiot bastard son has given the republicans de facto control of the state senate, and Daily Kos has relentlessly hammered the Working Families Party for buying his promises. We have also learned plenty about Andy’s ethics when he shut down his own ethics commission the minute it started looking at Hizzoner himself.
But in the wake of Sheldon Silver’s arrest for corruption, US Attorney Preet Bharara had a warning for Albany:
[T]he charges “in our view go to the very core of what ails Albany: lack of transparency, lack of accountability and lack of principle — joined with overabundance of greed, cronyism and self-dealing. But we will keep at it.”
“As our unfinished fight against public corruption continues, you should stay tuned.”
But when pressed for more details, Bharara demurred.
“We have a number of public corruption investigations going on,” he said. “I’m not going to tell you which people we’re looking at.”
…and THAT, my friends, has made Andy Angry:
Gov . Cuomo is “freaked-out and furious” over the bombshell criminal charges dropped on Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver last week — and “obsessed with fear’’ because of the ongoing federal corruption probe.
One source described Cuomo as “doubly enraged’’ by hard-driving Manhattan US Attorney Preet Bharara’s decision to bring the five criminal corruption charges against Silver just hours after the governor delivered his State of the State address — and then, less than 24 hours after that, to indict Albany’s “three men in a room’’ culture in which Cuomo is the lead player….
And several sources described Cuomo — who along with his aides is being investigated by Bharara over the abrupt disbanding of the governor’s Moreland Act commission on public corruption — as “on edge’’ over Bharara’s ominous statement Friday that the public should “stay tuned’’ for more criminal charges to come.
“Andrew’s been working the phones day and night, staying up into the early morning hours, making hundreds of calls in one day trying to find out what the hell is going on,’’ a source close to the governor said….
“He’s freaked-out, furious, and obsessed with fear, it’s like a nightmare for him. The whole narrative he laid out for his second term has been derailed by Bharara,’’ said a source in regular contact with the governor.
Couldn’t have happened to a more deserving person. Pass the popcorn, the movie’s just getting good!
Also available in basic black and in the pond
