Feds: Sheldon Silver Used His Position to Help His Mistresses
By Will Bredderman April 15, 2016 1:08 pm
reprints
The judge who presided over ex-Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver’s trial last year today released a ream of government documents that she declined to admit as evidence—and the papers claim Silver had affairs with a pair of women and used his immense power in Albany to boost their careers.
The heavily redacted briefs, submitted by corruption-busting U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, allege that the FBI discovered phone records and recordings of Mr. Silver conversing with his extramarital lady friends on a special cell phone he obtained just for that purpose. The feds identified one woman as a lobbyist, and describe the other as a woman Silver had a “long-running” relationship with, and whom he helped get a job with a state entity “over which he exercised a particularly high level of control.”
The documents allude to cache of taped phone discussions investigators found during their probe of the now-convicted speaker, which included a whispered chat between Silver and the first mistress that apparently was recorded by accident. Mr. Bharara’s office describes the two talking about a reporter digging into politicians and their illicit liaisons, and Silver warning his lover that the situation was “not safe” even though “I don’t think he caught us.”
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