Sheldon Silver Is Convicted in 2nd Corruption Trial
Source: The New York Times
By Benjamin Weiser
May 11, 2018
Sheldon Silver, the former powerful Democratic speaker of the New York State Assembly, was found guilty of federal corruption charges on Friday, less than a year after his first conviction on the same charges was thrown out.
During his two-week trial in Manhattan, prosecutors showed that Mr. Silver, 74, had obtained nearly $4 million in illicit payments in return for taking a series of official actions that benefited a cancer researcher at Columbia University and two real estate developers in New York.
Mr. Silver served more than two decades as the Assembly speaker, and along with Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and Dean G. Skelos, the former Republican State Senate majority leader, became known as one of New York’s “three men in a room” who controlled decision making in Albany.
Both Mr. Silver and Mr. Skelos forfeited their seats in late 2015 after each was convicted in a separate corruption trial. But both men’s convictions were overturned last year after the United States Supreme Court, in a ruling that reversed the conviction of Bob McDonnell, a former Republican governor of Virginia, narrowed the kind of quid-pro-quo actions that could constitute corruption.
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/11/nyregion/sheldon-silver-retrial-guilty.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
