Whipped Cream Difficulties

Wanda Vázquez, the former governor of Puerto Rico, has been charged with taking bribes from a donor to her campaign.

The donor, Julio M. Herrera Velutini — a Venezuelan banker who has been mired in regulatory problems in Puerto Rico — was also charged. Mr. Herrera, 50, owns Bancrédito, an international bank that faced scrutiny from Puerto Rico regulators over suspicious banking transactions.
According to the Department of Justice, Mr. Herrera wanted the island’s top banking regulator to be replaced, and in return offered to pay $300,000 to political consultants working on the governor’s campaign. Ms. Vázquez, who was facing re-election at the time, agreed to the plan, W. Stephen Muldrow, the United States Attorney for Puerto Rico, said, adding that Mr. Herrera then formed a political action committee for Ms. Vázquez.
The grand jury’s 42-page indictment details meetings and text messages purported to show the quid-pro-quo nature of the arrangement. The governor went through with her end of the bargain, forcing the incumbent banking commissioner to step down and installing Mr. Herrera’s choice as the new commissioner, according to the indictment.

It gets a little better: the bribe money was funneled through an ex-FBI agent.

Mr. Rossini, 60, is a former F.B.I. supervisory agent who, before the Sept. 11 attacks, was assigned to a C.I.A. task force investigating Al Qaeda, but was criminally charged for illegally running unauthorized searches on a government computer. After pleading guilty to those charges, he paid a fine and served community service and a year of probation.

Ms. Vázquez became governor in 2019, after the previous governor resigned. She lost the primary election in 2020. The NYT describes her as a pro-statehood Republican.

The former governor, the banker and the former federal agent were each charged with conspiracy, federal programs bribery, and honest services wire fraud, and could face up to 20 years in prison if convicted…

Do I need to say it?

In other news, Hillsborough County State Attorney Andrew Warren got booted out of office. No, he didn’t lose an election. No, he hasn’t been indicted.

Ron DeSantis fired his arse for not enforcing state law.

At a news conference flanked by police from around Tampa Bay, DeSantis said Warren has “put himself publicly above the law” by signing letters saying he would not enforce laws prohibiting gender-affirming care for minors or laws limiting abortion.

…

DeSantis’ order does not cite examples of Warren not prosecuting individual cases. The state has no laws on gender-affirming care that Warren could refuse to prosecute. Instead, DeSantis’ order points to Warren’s public comments on abortion, transgender issues and office policies Warren has adopted.

But:

…Hillsborough County Sheriff Chad Chronister said at Thursday’s news conference that police have had long-running frustrations with Warren for not prosecuting particular cases.
“I continue to work with my law enforcement counterparts who privately are frustrated with the state attorney, who seems intently focused on empathy for criminals and less interested in pursuing justice for crime victims,” Chronister said.

In addition to the abortion and transgender stuff, the complaints include:

▪ Warren enacting a policy not to prosecute “certain criminal violations, including trespassing at a business location, disorderly conduct, disorderly intoxication, and prostitution.”
▪ Warren enacting a policy “against prosecuting crimes where the initial encounter between law enforcement and the defendant results from a non-criminal violation in connection with riding a bicycle or a pedestrian violation.”

Bonus: Scott Israel is apparently working as a chief of police in Opa-locka, Florida. That’s Scott Israel, former Broward County Sheriff, who got booted from office by Ron DeSantis after the Parkland shooting. Did not know this.

Jason Lary, the ex-mayor of Stonecrest, Georgia, was sentenced to 57 months in prison yesterday.

Former Mayor Lary pled guitly in January to wire fraud, conspiracy, and theft of federal funds. He took COVID relief funds granted by DeKalb County and used them to pay off his mortgage and back taxes. Some of the money also went to pay his bookkeeper’s son’s college expenses. (She’s also pled guilty to conspiracy, but hasn’t been sentenced yet.)

In addition to the prison time, Mr. Lary will have to pay $120,000 in restitution, and serve three years of supervised release.

Apologies for linking to the NYT on this. I can’t get the story from the Atlanta paper to go through archive.is, and the AJC is very obnoxious about subscribing/adblocking.

Remember Andrew Gillum? Ran against Ron DeSantis in 2018? Crystal meth?

He was just indicted.

The 21-count indictment, which was unsealed Wednesday following his arrest, accuses Gillum and another associate, Sharon Janet Lettman-Hicks, with conspiracy, wire fraud and making false statements, according to a news release from the Department of Justice.
Federal prosecutors allege that between 2016 and 2019, Gillum and Lettman-Hicks, a consultant and one of Gillum’s closest advisers, solicited and obtained money from people “through false and fraudulent promises and representations that the funds would be used for a legitimate purpose,” according to the news release. Instead, that money was diverted to a company owned by Lettman-Hicks, who paid Gillum “disguised as payroll payments … for his personal use.”

Since the indictment is fresh (thanks to Mike the Musicologist for letting me know about it) there’s not a whole lot more information beyond that. If I see any interesting updates, I’ll add them here.

South Dakota Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg was impeached yesterday.

That doesn’t mean he’s out of office, just that he’s going to an impeachment trial in the state Senate.

The impeachment is tied to a traffic accident in 2020.

…he initially told authorities he thought he had struck a deer or another large animal.

He actually hit a man, Joseph Boever, who died.

Ravnsborg, who took office in 2019, initially told aides and a 911 dispatcher he did not know what he hit on a rural highway as he was returning home from a Republican dinner in September 2020. He went back to the scene the next day and found the body of 55-year-old Boever, who had been walking on the highway’s shoulder.
The Highway Patrol concluded that Ravnsborg’s car crossed completely onto the highway shoulder before hitting Boever, and criminal investigators said later that they didn’t believe some of Ravnsborg’s statements.

Ravnsborg pled to two traffic related misdemeanors in the accident, but apparently there are a lot of people who don’t believe his story. Including Governor Kristi Noem, who is also a Republican: Ravnsborg claims she’s out to get him because he’s been investigating her.

In its 36-31 vote, the House rejected the recommendation of a GOP-backed majority report from a special investigative committee and sided with Noem, who has argued that Ravnsborg lied to investigators. Democrats also had pushed for impeachment, arguing that he was not “forthcoming” to law enforcement officers and had abused the power of his office.

Brian A. Benjamin, the lieutenant governor of the state of New York, has been indicted on federal bribery charges.

The indictment, the result of an investigation by the F.B.I. and the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, accused Mr. Benjamin of conspiring to direct state funds to a Harlem real estate investor in exchange for orchestrating thousands of dollars in illegal campaign contributions to Mr. Benjamin’s unsuccessful 2021 campaign for New York City comptroller, the people said. The investor was arrested on federal charges in November.

…

In a grand jury indictment last November, prosecutors said that Mr. Migdol began to steer thousands of dollars worth of fraudulent contributions to Mr. Benjamin in October 2019, just a month after the state senator filed to run for comptroller. They accused him of making straw donations in the name of individuals, including his 2-year-old grandchild, who did not consent to them, and of reimbursing others for the cost of their contributions.
At the time, the prosecutors did not comment on Mr. Migdol’s motive, or explicitly name Mr. Benjamin. But they said his scheme was designed to help the candidate tap into New York City’s generous public campaign matching funds program and secure him tens of thousands of dollars in additional campaign cash.

Edited to add: Well, that was fast. Mr. Benjamin is now the former lieutenant governor.

Despite his resignation, Mr. Benjamin is likely to remain on the Democratic primary ballot in June, along with two main challengers. Because Mr. Benjamin was designated as the Democratic Party’s nominee for lieutenant governor, his name could only be removed at this point if he were to move out of the state, die or seek another office.