Thursday, October 12, 2017

Gov. Cuomo Could Oust DA Vance But They Share A Party — And Donors

Cyrus Vance Jr.


Embattled Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. may be running for reelection unopposed, but that doesn’t mean he’s off the hook for declining to prosecute cases against Harvey Weinstein and President Donald Trump’s eldest children and accepting campaign cash from lawyers linked to those would-be defendants in the process. Under New York law, Vance could be immediately removed from office by Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a fellow Democrat.

The major obstacle to such a move, however, might not be a shared party, but shared donors: Cuomo himself has received $127,000 from some of the same Vance contributors at the heart of the recent controversies — and he has also received more than $72,000 directly from Weinstein himself.

The New York Constitution gives the governor power to remove a district attorney at any time, so long as the governor gives the DA a “copy of the charges against him or her” and “an opportunity of being heard in his or her defense.” It also explicitly declares that “any district attorney who shall fail faithfully to prosecute a person charged with the violation in his or her county of any provision of this article which may come to his or her knowledge, shall be removed from office by the governor.”

Cuomo is a potential 2020 presidential candidate who has cast himself as a bold opponent of Trump and defender of women’s rights.

His office did not respond to repeated International Business Times requests for comment about Vance’s decisions not to persue indictments of the Trumps or Weinstein.

Click here for the full article.

Source: International Business Times (via The Empire Report) 

No comments: