Bharara clears Cuomo’s office in Moreland Commission probe

ALBANY - U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara's ominous line to Albany to "stay tuned" apparently no longer applies to Gov. Andrew Cuomo's handling of the Moreland Commission.

Bharara said Monday that there is “insufficient evidence to prove a federal crime” after his office investigated Cuomo’s decision to shut down a corruption-busting panel in 2014 and alleged tampering by Cuomo’s aides into the panel’s work.

Bharara, who has led a crusade against corruption in Albany, issued a two-sentence statement that appeared to absolve Cuomo and his staff of any federal wrongdoing in potential meddling with the Moreland Commission, which Cuomo set up in 2013 to investigate misdeeds at the Capitol.

“After a thorough investigation of interference with the operation of the Moreland Commission and its premature closing, this office has concluded that, absent any additional proof that may develop, there is insufficient evidence to prove a federal crime,” Bharara said.

Bharara indicated that his office is still investigating cases that were brought to his office by the Moreland Commission, which was believed to be investigating a dozen or more lawmakers over their outside income and campaign-finance spending.

“We continue to have active investigations related to substantive inquiries that were being conducted by the Moreland Commission at the time of its closure,” the statement concluded.

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The statement came just two days before Cuomo is set to give his State of the State address in Albany, clearing him of the cloud that has hung over his office since the Moreland Commission was disbanded in March 2014.

"The noise that the public might have heard around the Capitol is the collective sigh of relief on the second floor," where Cuomo's offices are located, said Blair Horner, legislative director for the New York Public Interest Research Group.

Elkan Abramowitz, the Cuomo administration's counsel in the case, praised Bharara's decision.

“We were always confident there was no illegality here, and we appreciate the U.S. Attorney clarifying this for the public record," Abramowitz said in a statement from the governor's office.

Cuomo’s office was accused of steering the 25-member panel, which included district attorneys from around the state, away from his office as it investigated potential corruption among state leaders.

And after the corruption convictions in recent weeks of the former legislative leaders, Sheldon Silver and Dean Skelos, there were renewed questions about whether Cuomo was Bharara’s next potential victim.

After Silver's arrest, Bharara offered, "Stay tuned," and as recently as last month wouldn't say whether Cuomo was the focus on any probe.

“I’m not going to talk about any investigations that we have open. We have lots of investigations open,” Bharara said last month on WNYC radio. “I think that people like to talk about what’s going to happen tomorrow.”

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Bharara had previously been critical of the Democratic governor's decision to shutter the panel after less than a year in exchange for what critics contended were modest ethics reforms.

"From where I sit, when you begin something, you finish it – particularly when you are telling everybody you are going to finish it," Bharara said April 10, 2014.

Republicans seized on Bharara's statement Monday, saying the carefully worded comments leave room for interpretation.

"The fact that insufficient evidence of 'federal crimes' was available to indict Mr. Cuomo of obstruction of justice is not the same as finding him innocent," Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino, who ran against Cuomo last year, said in a statement.

Astorino called on an independent prosecutor to be appointed to look into the case on the state level.

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Cuomo has maintained that neither he nor his staff did anything wrong when he shuttered the commission. He said he ended it as part of a 2014 budget deal exchange for ethics reforms that the Legislature was reluctant to embrace. He also has said the commission was independent, though his staff had the right to guide it because he empaneled it.

"It was a temporary commission. It was never a permanent commission," Cuomo said in April 2014.

Cuomo and legislative leaders are expected in the coming months to negotiate a new round of ethics reforms as a response to the convictions of Silver and Skelos.

Horner said while Bharara didn't find any criminality, Cuomo's handling of the commission will among his biggest miscues in office.

"This was a mishandled episode in the Cuomo years," Horner said. "The governor made it worse by his sort of rhetorical gyrations on what the commission was doing."

 JSpector@Gannett.com

Joseph Spector is chief of the Gannett Albany Bureau.