After Dems swept their way through the state in November's election, the state's highest ranking Republican is now State Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno (he also happens to be my State Senator). Last night, Bruno held a press conference to announce that he's being investigated by the FBI for some of his "outside business interests". Much more below...
The Times Union has a good story about the press conference, where Bruno didn't say all that much:
"I am sharing this because there have been leaks, which I believe are totally illegal," Bruno said. "And rather than have the speculation out there, I believed it was appropriate for me to share generally what is going on."
This investigation has apparently been going on for some time, and while it's all fine and dandy that he wants to "share generally what is going on" now, this might have been useful information, say, before the election.
The kicker of this whole thing is, he ended up running unopposed this year, even though we had a challenger all lined up. It was a bizarre situation all around, as the challenger, Brian Premo was by no means a great choice. Premo is a lawyer that wasn't willing to take time off to actually campaign, and had switched parties multiple times in the past. Back in the spring, when he visited the Saratoga County Dems, he didn't seem like a very dedicated candidate, and gave his reason for his most recent switch in party as being "the lies that Kerry told about his war record" (paraphrased). So, I wasn't crazy about him, but I liked the idea of having a challenger for Bruno. Long story short, he ended up not being able to run, since he didn't get the endorsement of the Saratoga Dems, and he would have needed it to run on the Dem line as a registered Repub. Granted, if Bruno would have actually had to spend some money and effort on reelection, he could have pulled out voters and ultimately hurt Kirsten Gillibrand in the NY-20 race, although seeing the end results of that race, I don't think he could have swung it in Sweeney's favor.
Anyway, coming back to the issue at hand... The rumors floating around (and mentioned in the TU story) are that this investigation involves half a million dollars in member items that Bruno sent the way of a company called Evident Technologies. Bruno's friend and business partner, Jared Abbruzzese, was formerly a co-charman of the company, and another business partner, Wayne Barr, is a current director. The TU says:
Investment firms run by Abbruzzese and Barr helped arrange financing for Evident. The firms, which included Dove Interests and Niskayuna Development LLC, were able to purchase Evident stock in 2002 and 2004 at deep discounts from the price for private investors, according to a confidential preliminary offering memo obtained by the Times Union.
To make things look even sketchier, the TU points out:
The two $250,000 grants were extremely unusual because member items almost never go to for-profit companies such as Evident.
A few thousand to a local church to help pay for a new organ? Fine. $50k for a historical society to preserve up an old building? OK. A couple grand to a local children's charity? Great! Half a million to a private, for-profit company that your buddies work for? Not so much...
There's more to the story, I'd suggest checking out the Times Union article for more details, but the long and short of it is that New York's only remaining Republican with any real power (and damn, the man's got some power! He's even got a baseball stadium named after him) could be in some serious trouble.
Ahhh... What a fun time to be a Dem in New York!
Edit: Damn, I guess NYBri diaried this last night. Oh well, I've got some info in here that he didn't include, so I'll leave this up for now.