Big news tonight from New York: Sheldon Silver, longtime New York State Assembly Speaker, is slated to be arrested on corruption charges on Thursday, according to the New York Times.
It's late so I'm just going to posted a few paragraphs from the article below.
Federal authorities are expected to arrest Sheldon Silver, the powerful speaker of the New York State Assembly, on corruption charges on Thursday, people with knowledge of the matter said, in a case that is likely to throw Albany into disarray.
The investigation that led to the expected charges against Mr. Silver, a Democrat from the Lower East Side of Manhattan who has served as speaker for more than two decades, began after Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo in March abruptly shut down an anticorruption commission he had created in 2013.
Details of the specific charges to be brought against Mr. Silver were unclear on Wednesday night, but one of the people with knowledge of the matter said they stemmed from payments that Mr. Silver received from a small law firm that specializes in seeking reductions of New York City real estate taxes. Mr. Silver failed to list the payments from the firm, Goldberg & Iryami, on his annual financial disclosure filings, as required.
The total amount of the payments was unclear, but another person has said they were substantial and were made over several years.
It's hard to explain the power that Sheldon Silver has wielded for decades in Albany. If you have an interest, read "Three Men in a Room." Here's the editorial synopsis from Amazon:
It might be a scene from a movie—three powerful and secretive men sit in a private corner of an exclusive New York club, imperiously making decisions that affect the lives of millions of people. But the scene takes place in Albany, New York, and the exclusive members are the Governor, the Senate Majority Leader, and the Speaker of the Assembly of the New York State Legislature.
Three Men in a Room is an insider’s exposé of how one of the country’s largest and most powerful governments—with the fourth-largest budget, behind only the federal government’s, California’s, and Texas’s—has become a model of corrupt, inefficient, and undemocratic governance.
More details surely to come tomorrow. This is huge news for the Empire State.