Federal prosecutors on Friday dropped bribery and fraud expenses in opposition to former New York Lt. Gov. Brian Benjamin, citing the dying of a cooperating witness in opposition to the Democrat who the governor had as soon as chosen to be her second-in-command.
Choose J. Paul Oetken signed an order closing the case in opposition to Benjamin after prosecutors advised him in a letter {that a} overview of proof within the case led them to conclude they may not show the fees past an affordable doubt after the dying of co-defendant Gerald Migdol.
Migdol died on Feb. 9, 2024. A funeral dwelling obituary on the time supplied no explanation for dying. The Harlem actual property developer had pleaded responsible in 2022, admitting that he organized tens of hundreds of {dollars} in faux contributions from 2019 to 2021 as Benjamin campaigned to be metropolis comptroller, a race he misplaced.
Benjamin resigned as lieutenant governor after his April 2022 arrest.
“At the moment’s vindication of Brian Benjamin is a well timed reminder of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.’s well-known phrases: ‘The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,’” Benjamin’s attorneys stated in an announcement on Friday.
Protection attorneys Barry Berke, Dani James and Darren LaVerne stated they “all the time believed this present day would come.”
The arrest created a political disaster for Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul after she had chosen Benjamin as her second-in-command.
She took the state’s high elected publish after a sexual harassment scandal drove from workplace her predecessor, Democrat Andrew Cuomo.
Benjamin beforehand had served within the state Legislature, representing most of central Harlem.
The case in opposition to Benjamin had not gone easily for prosecutors earlier than Migdol’s dying.
In December 2022, Oetken tossed out the bribery and fraud expenses, leaving solely data falsification expenses in opposition to Benjamin.
In a written opinion, Oetken wrote that prosecutors didn’t allege an express instance through which Benjamin supplied a favor for a bribe, a vital ingredient of bribery and sincere providers fraud expenses.
Final March, nonetheless, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Courtroom of Appeals in Manhattan reinstated the fees, saying an indictment within the case “sufficiently alleged an explicit quid pro quo.”
The appeals court docket stated a jury may infer from info within the case that Benjamin promised to allocate $50,000 in state funds to a nonprofit group managed by Migdol in return for marketing campaign contributions from the developer.
On the time, Berke stated on his shopper’s behalf that the “facts are clear that Mr. Benjamin did nothing other than engage in routine fundraising and support a nonprofit providing needed resources to Harlem public schools.”
The Supreme Courtroom had just lately declined to listen to an attraction of the 2nd Circuit’s choice.
A spokesperson for prosecutors declined to remark Friday.
