Former Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver was convicted on Monday on all counts in his federal fraud and corruption trial.
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The conviction of former Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver has shaken NY politics down to the granite foundations of the state Capitol, provoking fresh calls to overhaul a system that has stubbornly clung to its long history of corruption.
In 2008, Hillary Clinton called Sheldon Silver “a stalwart voice on behalf of the needs of New Yorkers” but on Monday, the disgraced NY state representative was found guilty on in a federal corruption sweep.
His prosecution was a marquee case in Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara’s quest to clean up state government, an effort that has led to the ongoing corruption trial of New York’s state Senate leader, Republican Dean Skelos. This is no time for piece-meal ethics reform.
We’ve been covering the charges against Silver and his fall from … for lack of a better word, I’ll say “grace?”.
The jury has been asked to decide whether the 71-year-old Democrat illegally accepted $4 million in payments and earned $1 million more illegally through investments.
“I’m disappointed right now”.
Defense attorney Steven Molo countered that his client fought bribery and extortion charges because he knew he was not guilty.
At the heart of the government’s case were two schemes in which a jury found Silver set up an illegal quid-pro-quo. Silver was first elected as interim speaker on January 25, 1994, at the age of 49, replacing Saul Weprin, who suffered a severe stroke a week earlier, and officially became the speaker on February 11, 1994, after the sudden death of Weprin. Initially it was following a scandal during which Silver helped broker a deal to use state money to pay a settlement to women who alleged Assemblyman Vito Lopez sexually assaulted them.
Silver faces up to 130 years in prison for the conviction.
Adam Skelos, the son of Sen.
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Glenwood and the campaign finance loophole have played a prominent role in the Skelos trial, too, where witnesses have testified about the importance of the loophole to the real estate industry. He was re-elected speaker 11 times, wielding enormous power as one of the infamous “three men in a room”, along with the governor and state Senate majority leader, who determined the state’s budget and legislative direction.
