By Laura Nahmias and Bill Mahoney
Nearly half of all of Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance’s campaign
contributions came from lawyers and law firms, most with criminal
defense practices, according to a POLITICO analysis of contributions
between 2014 and now.
The Manhattan D.A.’s fundraising has come under close scrutiny in the
past two weeks, after news reports showed he’d accepted donations from
the law firms and attorneys representing Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump,
Jr., in a fraud investigation that Vance ultimately decided to drop. And
he took in donations from attorneys representing Harvey Weinstein, the
disgraced Hollywood mogul whom Vance’s office declined to prosecute back
in 2015 after a young woman alleged Weinstein had sexually assaulted
her.
But beneath the recent headlines, the donations highlight a
fundraising peculiarity enjoyed by state prosecutors: New York’s 62
District Attorneys, unlike some other state officials with prosecutorial
power, are not prohibited from receiving money from people they're
actively investigating.
“This is not a problem which is unique to Cy Vance,” said Susan Lerner, head of Common Cause, a good government group.
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Source: Politico (via The Empire Report)
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