24 March 2021: Editorial - NY Assembly Should Stop Stalling Cuomo Impeachment Trial

Quit stalling — hold Gov. Cuomo's impeachment trial now

The New York Post's editors have a few words to say about Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie's lack of scope control for the legislature's impeachment probe of Governor Cuomo:

Just as we feared, the Assembly is stalling to protect Gov. Andrew Cuomo — aiming to take months to complete its impeachment inquiry. What a flagrant farce.

"Given the breadth and seriousness of the issues under investigation, we expect that the timing will be in terms of months, rather than weeks," Assembly Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Lavine (D-LI) said Tuesday.

That's because Speaker Carl Heastie (D-Bronx) threw everything but the kitchen sink into the mix to drag it out.

In project management, it's called "scope creep". It's a bad thing that generally only ensures failure. Having the Assembly Speaker build it in from the very beginning of an impeachment probe means the probe is designed to fail.

23 March 2021: News from Cuomoland Evening Edition

The New York Assembly's impeachment probe is barely underway and it already has a scope creep problem, including a hotline for New Yorkers to report tips for their impeachment probe:

• Cuomo impeachment investigation to take ‘months, rather than weeks’
• Assembly Holds First Public Meeting in Cuomo Impeachment Investigation
• New York lawmakers launch new hotline for tips in Cuomo impeachment probe

A failure to control the scope of what the Assembly investigates in its impeachment probe may part of a cynical political strategy to keep Governor Cuomo in power.

Meanwhile, two members of the New York Assembly have tested positive for COVID-19:

• Assembly Speaker Heastie, Cuomo nemesis Ron Kim infected with COVID

Despite that setback, the repeal of the legal immunity Governor Cuomo granted to hospitals and nursing home operators may be in sight in the New York Assembly:

• Legislature expected to grant final approval to corporate immunity repeal bill

More evidence emerges that the Biden-Harris administration is okay with all the COVID nursing home deaths in Pennsylvania:

• Biden ignores Levine's nursing home scandal, touts transgender qualifications

And now, the most fun headline we saw today:

• Batman, Cayuga County legislator, says Cuomo should resign as NY governor

You know it's bad when you've lost the support of the Caped Crusader!*

* Yes, we know the article isn't referring to the real Caped Crusader, but is instead reporting on Cuyoga County Legislator Keith Batman's call for Governor Cuomo to resign. However, we're pretty sure the legislator has been erroneously mistaken for the Dark Knight before.

16 May 2021: NY Assembly Impeachment Probe Underfunded, Nearly All But Guaranteed to Fail

$250K legal contract for Cuomo impeachment probe isn’t nearly enough, critics say

This report was published on 14 May 2021. It includes several independent assessments that the amount of money allocated by New York Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie for the Assembly's impeachment probe won't produce very much investigation results.

The state Assembly has so far allocated just $250,000 for its sprawling impeachment investigation of Gov. Andrew Cuomo — enough for barely three weeks of full-time work by its team of outside lawyers, according to a contract made public Friday.

Critics said the miserly move shows that lawmakers are short-changing the probe into the the multiple scandals threatening Cuomo’s political career.

Here are several excerpts of the assessments, starting with NY state senator Alessandra Biaggi's rap the impeachment probe has been a sham from the beginning:

“I believe the Assembly has more than enough reason to draft articles of impeachment and they are using this impeachment investigation to appease and buy time for the governor,” state Sen. Alessandra Biaggi (D-The Bronx) said.

Here's an assessment from a group considered to be right-of-center in New York:

“For $250,000, you cannot expect they’re doing a whole lot,” said Cameron Macdonald, an adjunct fellow at the Empire Center for Public Policy, a conservative think tank.

“There’s documents to review, there’s witnesses to interview … it will just disappear.”

And one from a left-of-center group:

Sarah Goff of the good-government group Common Cause New York also said, “Given the breadth of the Assembly Judiciary Committee’s investigation into the Governor, the size of the contract seems to suggest a less than robust commitment of resources.”

The Assembly's impeachment probe has been set up to fail through scope creep by design, which is to say its investigative focus may be expanded on the whims of the politicians overseeing it. As such, it lacks sufficient controls to produce findings it can obtain with its limited resources within a limited period of time.

26 March 2021: Did NY Governor Break Law Looking Out for Número Cuomo?

Did New York Governor Cuomo break the law by looking out for número Cuomo?

Zack Fink tweeted the answer to that question after finding out:

In light of the latest revelations about @NYGovCuomo, first reported in the @timesunion & @washingtonpost, Cuomo’s conduct of supplying scarce Covid testing for friends and family appears to be a clear violation of New York State Public Officers Law Part 74, Public Standards: pic.twitter.com/HqRmQW8dnr

— Zack Fink (@ZackFinkNews) March 25, 2021

We guess we won't hear about any of this on CNN!

But the new scandal would appear set to be investigated by NY Attorney General Letitia James and will, of course, be considered by Assembly Speaker Carl "Scope Creep" Heastie's intentionally designed, neverending bottomless pit of an impeachment probe:

• Letitia James seeks ethics probe into Covid testing for Andrew Cuomo’s relatives
• Impeachment probe to examine COVID tests for Cuomo relatives

Meanwhile, Governor Cuomo appears to have really gone out of the way to send COVID testing kits to a major supporter:

• Executive With Ties to Cuomo Got Special Access to Virus Testing

Giving credit where it's due, the latter story is from the New York Times, which ventured outside its usual sexual harassment allegation beat.

15 August 2021: Heastie Claims "There Was No Deal" Behind Choice to Drop Cuomo Impeachment

"There Was No Deal": Assembly Speaker Defends Decision To Suspend Cuomo Impeachment Probe

This report captures NY Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie reaction to charges that he struck a deal with Andrew M. Cuomo to escape impeachment through resignation. We'll have original commentary after the following excerpts.

Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie insisted there was no backroom deal cut with Governor Andrew Cuomo to suspend the impeachment probe in exchange for the governor's resignation effective August 24th.

"There was no deal," Heastie said in an interview with Spectrum News Friday evening. "I've said that 150 times and I'll make that the 151st time."

Legislators speculate a deal was made so that Cuomo can run for office in the future since an impeachment would have resulted in Cuomo no longer being allowed to hold public office in New York state again.

Heastie said the Assembly’s decision to suspend the probe by the Judiciary Committee stemmed from not wanting to interfere with multiple investigations into Cuomo. They include a criminal inquiry by the Albany County Sheriff’s Office into allegations Cuomo groped a female staffer in November last year.

The problem with that claim is that impeachment is not a criminal law enforcement action. It's a political action that may be taken independently and separately from law enforcement investigations.

Heastie also cited constitutional concerns:

There were also constitutionality questions raised by the Assembly's lawyers over whether it can move forward with drafting articles of impeachment after Cuomo resigned, according to Heastie.

"We had our lawyers look at that and they confirmed they did not think that it was likely that we could move forward with articles of impeachment," Heastie said.

Once again, that was a choice. Per his resignation announcment, Andrew M. Cuomo will still be governor until 24 August 2021. The Assembly could have streamlined its impeachment considerations to focus on just one charge for which it has long had ample evidence, and proceeded with it, moving to and completing a trial in the senate within the two weeks Cuomo announced he would remain in office before resigning.

Of course, the Assembly would have been able to move faster with more charges had Cuomo-ally Heastie not previously sabotaged it. Heastie's choices to deliberately slow walk the Assembly's impeachment probe and to sabotage it through scope creep ensured it could never move fast. That's not hindsight - its deficiencies were well recognized by contemporary observers who described Heastie's impeachment probe of Cuomo as a sham from the time it was established.

There never needed to be a deal between Cuomo and Heastie at the end to trade impeachment for resignation. The fix was in from the beginning, by design, ready to go if the heat grew too hot for Cuomo to stay in office.

24 May 2021: NY Lawmakers Starting to Think NY Assembly's Cuomo Impeachment Probe is a Sham

Pace of Andrew Cuomo Impeachment Probe Frustrates Some Lawmakers

It's not a surprise that New York legislators who favor Governor Cuomo's removal from office are unhappy with the pace at which the New York Assembly's impeachment probe is moving. The probe was effectively designed to fail by Cuomo ally Assembly Speaker Carl "Scope Creep" Heastie, who in addition to setting up its bottomless pit investigative philosophy, also severely underfunded it.

What this report emphasizes is how important NY Attorney General "Tish" James' investigative findings will be in driving what elected officials do.

Some members of the New York state Assembly who support the impeachment of Gov. Andrew Cuomo are growing frustrated with the pace of the chamber’s inquiry into the Democratic governor and his administration, and said they would use an outside report as a basis for moving forward.

The members said they expect that a state attorney general investigation into accusations that Mr. Cuomo sexually harassed current and former aides will wrap up before the Assembly Judiciary Committee’s probe. The impeachment probe began in mid-March; State Attorney General Letitia James’s investigation started March 1.

The committee is looking at the harassment allegations, as well as administration policies on Covid-19 in nursing homes, concerns about the use of state resources to work on the governor’s memoir and priority access to Covid-19 tests that people close to Mr. Cuomo received in the early days of the pandemic.

The committee hasn’t met since April, but it is scheduled to convene again on Wednesday. Assemblyman Charles Lavine, the committee chairman, said in March that the inquiry would take months rather than weeks. He declined to comment Friday through a spokesman. Legislators in the Democrat-dominated chamber are scheduled to adjourn their annual session on June 10, but the investigation is expected to continue during the summer recess.

Assemblyman Ron Kim, a Queens Democrat who favors impeaching Mr. Cuomo, said the Judiciary Committee wasn’t moving quickly enough and he would push his colleagues to act if Ms. James’s report affirmed the harassment allegations.

That reality is why Governor Cuomo and his loyalist followers have been seeking to undermine the AG's probe.

Here is relevant coverage from the timeline on that last point:

• 3 May 2021: A Preemptive Smear of NY AG Sexual Harassment Probe Findings
• 11 May 2021: Editorial - The Preemptive Smears of Governor Cuomo
• 14 May 2021: Cuomo Contradicts His Own Harassment Law