21 July 2021: Team Cuomo Engages in Smears of Former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara

Gov. Cuomo’s team promotes fishy story about Preet Bharara as smokescreen

The remnants of Team Cuomo are becoming especially busy engaging in smear campaigns against prosecuting attorneys. In addition to their now months-long campaign to discredit the criminal investigations of New York State Attorney General Letitia "Tish" James, they are now using similar tactics to attack former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Preet Bharara.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s people have been putting out a very fishy story that Preet Bharara is putting out feelers about a run for governor in 2022 — as a way to undermine the investigation into Randy Andy.

Insiders in Cuomo’s camp are whispering loudly that Bharara, the former federal prosecutor who served as the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York from 2009 to 2017, is making inquiries in New York Democratic circles about a possible run next year

But this April, Bharara, 52, just sold his company Cafe Studios, the podcast-first publisher, to Vox Media. Insiders say Bharara has made a commitment to Vox to stay with the company and develop fresh projects as well as continue to build his flagship show, “Stay Tuned with Preet.” Which means he can’t run for office.

The report then digs into the reasons for Team Cuomo's recent smear attempts:

So why are Cuomo’s people loudly suggesting Bharara is going to run? Because Bharara’s former deputy and successor, former acting US Attorney Joon Kim, was appointed by Attorney General Letitia James to lead the inquiry into the sexual harassment and misconduct allegations that have shadowed Cuomo for many months.

Kim is working with employment discrimination attorney Anne Clark and their findings will go in a public report expected to be released next month. They are believed to have interviewed Cuomo and some of his staffers this past weekend.

A Democratic source said, “This is a tactic by Camp Cuomo to undermine the federal investigation. If Preet could be seen as an opponent to Cuomo, they think they could [further] question Kim’s impartiality.” Another source says the rumors are not being put out by a Cuomo staffer, rather someone else in his orbit.

As with their attempted smears of Tish James' motives, Team Cuomo appears to not have any evidence to support its smears on Bharara.

But they are indeed very interested in tarnishing James' investigator, former Deputy U.S. Attorney Joon Kim:

A spokesperson for Cuomo didn’t hold back when asked about Kim: “Mr. Kim’s bias and acrimonious history with Governor Cuomo is a well-known fact after years of public battles separate and apart from Bharara. Just Google Joon Kim and Governor Cuomo and that fact is abundantly clear.”

If we had to guess from the tone-deafness of the comments and the absence of any specific evidence to support them, the spokesperson was almost certainly Cuomo loyalist and chief PR flack Richard Azzopardi. Governor Cuomo has been seeking better PR people and more legal help for many months. It's an open question of whether Cuomo's desperate need for better PR people is driving his need for more legal help.