The Commission to Investigate Public Corruption’s website was, during its operation, materially incomplete and revisionist – and this and other frauds of that sham Commission were painstakingly chronicled by the Center for Judicial Accountability’s April 23, 2014 order to show cause to intervene in the declaratory judgment action against the Commission, purportedly brought by the Senate and Assembly.   Fortunately, CJA’s April 23, 2014 order to show cause, which included an analysis of the Commission’s December 2, 2013 preliminary report, is a PERMANENT court record in Supreme Court/New York County (#160941/2013) – the posting of which, on the court’s electronic portal, I secured, at great effort, at that time.   In any event, the April 23, 2014 order to show cause – and all proceedings thereon – are PERMANENT on CJA’s website, www.judgewatch.org, accessible via the homepage link: “Exposing the Fraud of the Commission to Investigate Public Corruption -- & Preet: NY’s UNTOUCHED ‘culture of corruption’ – Pay Raises JCOPE, Judicial & Attorney Discipline”.  The direct link is here:   http://www.judgewatch.org/web-pages/searching-nys/commission-to-investigate-public-corruption/holding-to-account/exposing-fraud-of-commission.htm  -- and, when you scroll down the page you will see CJA’s “ARCHIVE OF ACTIVISM”, whose second link is for CJA’s April 23, 2014 order to show cause to intervene.  As for the first link, it is entitled “Holding the Commission to Investigate Public Corruption True to its Name & Announced Purpose” and brings up webpages for the Commission’s three hearings, aggregated under the title heading “The People Have Something to Say -- & EVIDENCE to Back it Up!”.  The direct link to the hearings webpage is here:  http://www.judgewatch.org/web-pages/searching-nys/commission-to-investigate-public-corruption/people-evidence/menu-people-evidence.htm -- and its links for the you-tube videos of the first two of the Commission’s three hearings are LIVE.   Why don’t you start by viewing my September 17, 2013 testimony before the Commission, as to which there is a convenient video clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1hXstP0Uhw – and as to which there was essentially NO media report.

With respect to your reference to the Commission on Public Corruption as an “all-star corruption busting panel”, this is – as you well know – utterly false.  The true facts about the Commission, from its inception to its shut-down, I have furnished you and your fellow journalists over and over again since 2013.  Indeed, it was the Commission’s fraud – purporting that it had no jurisdiction to “follow the money” gushing from New York’s slush-fund, facially unlawful state budget – combined with the nonfeasance of all investigative and prosecutorial authorities, US Attorney Preet Bharara and Albany County District Attorney P. David Soares, among them, that gave rise to CJA’s first citizen-taxpayer action against Governor Cuomo, Attorney General Schneiderman, Comptroller DiNapoli, and all 63 Senators and 150 Assembly Members for their “grand larceny of the public fisc”.  Reflecting this is CJA’s March 28, 2014 verified complaint therein (¶¶7, 12, 31-34, 48-50) – and the even more detailed recitation in CJA’s April 23, 2014 order to show cause to intervene in the declaratory judgment action, both by my moving affidavit and its accompanying verified complaint.   

By the way, when are you going to report on CJA’s first citizen-taxpayer action, pertaining to fiscal years 2014-2015 and 2015-2016 – and on the second citizen-taxpayer action, pertaining to fiscal year 2016-2017, about which I testified at the Legislature’s January 30, 2017 and January 31, 2017 budget hearings: http://www.judgewatch.org/web-pages/searching-nys/2017-legislature/budget-hearings.htm – and which then became the subject of a block-buster March 29, 2017 order to show cause to supplement as to fiscal year 2017-2018:  http://www.judgewatch.org/web-pages/searching-nys/budget/citizen-taxpayer-action/2016/9-2-16-osc-complaint/3-29-17-osc.htm, that I alerted you and your fellow journalists to.   Is it your view that the defendants— seeking other and higher elected offices this year and all up for re-election next year – should not be called upon to respond, and sooner, rather than later, to my budget testimony and the lawsuit – so that this year’s elections and next can become competitive?    

To facilitate reporting by you and your colleagues about what a legitimate Commission to Investigate Public Corruption would have READILY uncovered – and its explosive, electoral consequences to the incumbents then and now, here’s the link to the menu of webpages I am now constructing, accessible via CJA’s homepage, entitled: “OUTING CORRUPT & COLLUSIVE INCUMBENTS & Ending their Road to Re-Election & Higher Office in 2017, 2018, & Beyond – WITH EVIDENCE”:  http://www.judgewatch.org/web-pages/elections/menu-ending-the-road.htm.    It features, for this election year, SENATOR GEORGE LATIMER, seeking to defeat Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino for that office, and ASSEMBLYWOMAN NICOLE MALLIOTAKIS, seeking to defeat New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio for that position.

I have a GOLDMINE OF PRIMARY-SOURCE EVIDENCE to furnish so that journalists who bristle at President Trump’s tirades about “fake news” can belatedly discharge their First Amendment responsibilities to inform the public of what it needs to know about the records, in office, of its elected officials.    I look forward to hearing from you, as soon as possible, any time day or night – and on weekends.  It is that important to our democracy.

Thank you.

Elena Ruth Sassower, Director

Center for Judicial Accountability, Inc. (CJA)

www.judgewatch.org

914-421-1200

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August 5, 2017, Capitol Confidential:  “Missing in inaction”  (Casey Seiler)

“Has anybody seen the website of the Moreland Commission to Investigate Public Corruption?

The site, like the commission itself, disappeared from the digital wonderland at some point in recent months. July marked the fourth anniversary of Gov. Andrew Cuomo creating the all-star corruption-busting panel; March saw the third anniversary of his decision to scuttle it midway through its existence in exchange for passage of a modest set of ethics reforms and a larger collection of budget-season goodies worked out with former Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and ex-Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos.

The website featured a list of the commission's members and all of its press releases as well as its preliminary report, which recommended the sort of comprehensive ethics fixes that have not seen much in the way of action by Cuomo and state lawmakers in the intervening years, despite the arrests and convictions of Silver and Skelos and the upstate development scandal that engulfed the Executive Chamber last year.

The Moreland Commission's website disappeared once before, in late 2015, though a Cuomo spokesman explained at the time that it was due to an expired server. It returned the next day. Maybe the site's server expired again. Maybe the website is on summer vacation. Maybe it's getting a snazzy new redesign. I kind of doubt it, though.

Also currently in the wind are the YouTube postings of the commission's three public hearings, including a five-alarm, Texas-style barbecue of several state Board of Elections members. They might still be on YouTube somewhere, albeit "delisted" — which means they can't be found by searching for words and phrases like "Moreland Commission" or "hearing" or "public corruption" or "Board of Elections." They used to be on the commission's site. Without that anchor, they are now untraceable.

Which is kind of frustrating, when you consider that the people of New York paid for the Moreland Commission — from its handpicked staffers to the travel arrangements of its commissioners and the bottled water laid out to keep them hydrated.

The commission's website went bye-bye along with a sibling site chronicling Cuomo's other high-profile Moreland Act panel, an earlier effort devoted to investigating substandard storm recovery efforts of the Long Island Power Authority.

I imagine both of them now as brother and sister wandering through a fog while holding hands.

If you see them, let me know.

cseiler@timesunion.com • 518-454-5619”

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PRESS OUTREACH -- CJA's August 10, 2017 OPEN LETTER

click here for:
OUTING CORRUPT & COLLUSIVE INCUMBENTS
& Ending their Road to Re-Election & Higher Office
in 2017, 2018, & Beyond -- WITH EVIDENCE!