Secretly taped New York lawmakers named in probe
NEW YORK -- Nine New York City Democrats, including state senators, a city council member and two political operatives, were secretly recorded by a former state senator seeking leniency for her role in a corruption scandal, and nearly all of them are under criminal investigation, according to court documents filed Wednesday.
The names were released over the objections of federal prosecutors who said in a separate filing a day earlier that eight of the nine were under criminal investigation and their names should not be made public. The names include state senators Malcolm Smith and John Sampson, who have already been charged in separate cases with crimes including bribery and embezzlement. They have pleaded not guilty.
Names of the other people secretly recorded by ex-Sen. Shirley Huntley and released Wednesday were: State Sens. Eric Adams, Ruth Hassel-Thompson, Jose Peralta and Velmanette Montgomery; City Council member Rubin Wills, who was Huntley's chief of staff before he ran for the council in a 2010 special election; former political consultant Melvin Lowe; and Curtis Taylor, a former press adviser to Smith.
Smith declined to comment. None of the others returned calls from The Associated Press seeking comment. A spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in Brooklyn said he could not reveal which one of the nine wasn't under criminal investigation.
http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/politics&id=9095251
