On 3/19/21, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
The person whom he put in charge of Covid relief, who is supposed to beIf true there is an undercurrent that sounds a bit like a page from
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."
