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[Tovarisc]

A New York City criminal defense firm and its partners together gave more than $42,000 to Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr., according to an International Business Times review of campaign finance records. Vance’s office negotiated deals that resulted in light sentences for some of the firm’s clients, and in certain cases allowed them to avoid prison time altogether.

New York state records show that attorneys at the criminal defense firm Clayman & Rosenberg LLP have been contributing to Vance since the Democrat started running for office in 2008. Over $24,000 of the donations came straight from the company’s coffers, and another more than $18,000 came from individual lawyers at the firm.

The disclosures follow a previous IBT report that showed Vance received $182,000 from Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein’s lawyer and his law partners. Vance declined to file sexual assault charges against Weinstein; his lawyer David Boies gave Vance $10,000 soon after. That report came just a day after ProPublica reported Vance declined to prosecute Ivanka and Donald Trump, Jr. for fraud in 2012. Five months later, Vance received a $32,000 campaign contribution from President Donald Trump’s longtime lawyer, Mark Kasowitz.

Boies and Kasowitz have said their donations were unrelated to Vance’s decisions not to prosecute their clients, and Vance has said there was no quid pro quo. Vance, who is running unopposed for a third term in November, returned Kasowitz’s donation last week in response to the reports.

“Contributions have never and will never influence Cy Vance’s work,” Steve Sigmund, Vance’s campaign spokesperson, told IBT in an email. “Every contribution is vetted by the DA’S office and a vetting committee, accepted where appropriate and flagged and turned down or returned where appropriate. The campaign neither does, nor should, know the details of any case before the DA’s office.”

“This is pay-to-play — it is clearly an attempt to buy influence and it has to stop,” said John Kaehny of the government watchdog group Reinvent Albany. “We have to change state law to prevent people with business before district attorneys and judges from making large campaign contributions. New York City has a law restricting campaign contributions from people doing business with the City and it works."

Clayman & Rosenberg’s website says the firm’s lawyers “ regularly appear in state and federal courts in the New York City metropolitan area, as well as in a variety of other jurisdictions nationwide, on behalf of clients charged with violations of federal and state drug laws, racketeering, assault and battery, identity theft, extortion, robbery, larceny, domestic violence and gambling.” The biographies of many of the firm’s attorneys say they previously worked in the Manhattan district attorney’s office. Among them is Isabelle Kirshner, whose biography notes that she served as a member of Vance’s 40-member transition team.

Campaign finance records show Kirshner, Charles Clayman and Seth Rosenberg together donated $3,000 to Vance roughly two months after the Hadden case ended. Kirshner references the case in her bio on the Clayman and Rosenberg website. Under a list of her accomplishments, one bullet point reads: “ Obtained a favorable result for a doctor accused of sexually abusing multiple patients.”

The Manhattan DA’s office gave Felton a deal in the summer of 2014, allowing him to avoid jail time. A few months later, Clayman and Kirshner gave Vance’s campaign a combined total of $3,000.

Campaign finance records show that Clayman & Rosenberg as well as Kirshner donated $3,500 to Vance in early 2013.

“There is no pay-to-play rule for prosecutors in New York,” Gillers said. “For prosecutors, we rely on their integrity not to allow a contribution influence their prosecutorial discretion. We also hope they will be sensitive to appearances if the clients of a lawyer who is a large contributor gets what appears to be favorable treatment.”

http://www.ibtimes.com/political-ca...hattan-da-cyrus-vance-kept-clients-out-prison

This after it already has come out he dropped / had his staff drop Trump & Weinstein cases after big donor visits.

 

[Frozenprince]

A New York City DA is corrupt?

Le GASP! I'm stunned.

Glad this is all coming out.