Whipped Cream Difficulties

The hyenas aren’t flaming, yet, but there is smoke.

And it seems oddly ironic in the first case.

Yesterday, the FBI searched the homes of two senior chiefs in the New York City Fire Department. They also searched offices in the FDNY department headquarters.

What could a chief do that requires FBI intervention? The chiefs in question were responsible for overseeing safety inspections.

The coordinated searches in Staten Island and Harlem were carried out as part of a corruption investigation that was initially focused on whether the chiefs had been paid nearly $100,000 each in a scheme to help expedite or arrange building inspections, several of the people said. The investigation began late last summer and was being conducted by the F.B.I., the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York and the New York City Department of Investigation.

Nobody seems to think this is related to the other ongoing corruption investigations, but there’s been no official statement. Because the chiefs haven’t been charged with any crime yet, I’m not naming them here.

As of late last year, the investigation into the chiefs was examining, at least in part, whether they had accepted the payments as part of an effort to help expedite or influence fire inspections on building projects, some of the people said.
The payments of $97,000 apiece to the chiefs came from a recently retired firefighter, and at least one was made to a limited liability company registered to [edited – DB] home address, the people said. In 2023, the Fire Department paid [edited – DB] $241,119 and [edited – DB] $235,462, according to city payroll records compiled by the watchdog group SeeThroughNY.net.

There’s some weird stuff I don’t want to try to explain (read the article: it’s archived) with the Turkish Consulate and (allegedly) Mayor Eric Adams.

That broader inquiry has focused at least in part on whether the Turkish government conspired with Mr. Adams’s campaign to funnel illegal foreign donations into its coffers. In that investigation, the F.B.I. and prosecutors have examined whether Mr. Adams, weeks before his election in 2021, pressured Fire Department officials to sign off on the Turkish government’s new high-rise consulate in Manhattan despite safety concerns, people with knowledge of the matter have said. Mr. Adams has said he did nothing improper, and he has not been accused of any wrongdoing.

In other news, Mike the Musicologist has been texting me updates about Tiffany Henyard, mayor of Dolton, Illinois. I haven’t written about her because she hasn’t been charged with a crime yet. But the NYPost has a good summary of her craziness.

She has come under scrutiny in recent weeks for a laundry list of antics, including accusations of blowing thousands in public funds on luxury travel and dining, turning local police into both her personal bodyguards and backup dancers for music videos, and hiring DJs for town meetings — all while the village falls $5 million into debt.

…

…Dolton Trustee Kiana Belcher said former Dolton Chief of Police Robert Collins admitted the mayor forced him to target people.
“She’ll have the police follow you and give tickets,” Belcher said. “I went out of town and she had one of the officers … give me tickets … It was a manipulation tactic.”
When she confronted Collins, Belcher said, the chief didn’t hesitate to blame Henyard.
“He looked down at me and said, ‘She told me to write them,’” Belcher said.

…

“It started probably two weeks after she had been in office as mayor. We got a bill for the inauguration. The bill was like $15,000.”
“It was a big party, basically,” Belcher said, explaining that Henyard promised to pay with campaign funds, but the town ended up footing the bill instead. And it was just the beginning of town-funded parties.
“The spending has become unbearable for the residents. It’s parties and a lot of events. It’s resources in reference to making it look like something is being done but we really can’t afford it.”

…

When a Post reporter and photographer showed up at the “Love on the Ice” Valentine’s Day dinner Wednesday night, four police officers blocked them from entering the event — despite it being on public property.
One officer said she received “an order” to ensure that they stay put on the sidewalk and she and another cop watched the pair for more than an hour as Henyard went igloo to igloo, taking selfies with residents, while R&B music and chants of “Super mayor!” blasted from speakers.
Henyard was flanked by an assistant and two cops — including the highest-ranking police official in Dolton, Deputy Police Chief Lewis Lacey, who acted like her bodyguard the entire night.

…

Beyond parties, Belcher said bills to the tune of $1 million have piled up from paying overtime to cops made to serve as Henyard’s personal security detail, first assigned after a protest over a shooting in 2021.
“She just latched on and kept the detail,” Belcher said. “The contract says that you can have a detail but it should be on their shift and it changes. But with her people, they pick up at 10 and drop off at 12, 1 in the morning, so it’s all overtime hours.”
“They pick up her daughter from school, they go shopping,” she said. “A million dollars of overtime for the police department is absurd. We can’t afford it.”

…

Henyard, who also serves as Thornton Township supervisor, lashed out at the village trustees last week after they filed a lawsuit alleging she forged checks and withheld financial records.
“You all should be ashamed of yourselves because you all are black. You all are black,” she said during a meeting on February 5. “And you all [are] sitting up here beating and attacking a black woman that’s in power.”
Henyard — who takes home $285,000 in salary from her political positions — has also faced criticism for a salary ordinance she proposed and passed that would cut by 90% the pay for whoever takes her seat if she loses the next election, Fox 32 reported. Her salary, however, would remain the same.

I was stuck at the hospital all d–n day (not for myself, for Someone Who Isn’t Me), but I wanted to make note of this before it got past me:

Marilyn Mosby, former Baltimore State’s Attorney, can add a conviction on one count of mortgage fraud to her perjury conviction. (Previously.)

She was acquitted on a second count of mortgage fraud.

While much of the trial focused on Mosby’s failure to disclose a federal tax debt that with penalties and interest had grown to $69,000, the guilty verdict was for a “gift letter” she composed saying that her then-husband Nick Mosby gave her enough money to close on the condo in Longboat Key, Florida.

Nick Mosby, by the way, is the president of the Baltimore City Council. Ms. Mosby was $5,000 short when it came time to close on her real estate deal, and she had a “locked in” interest rate that was set to expire.

Her mortgage broker, Gilbert Bennett, had another solution. He downloaded a template for a “gift letter” from the lending company’s website, filled it out partially and told Mosby to take it from there.

She filled it out saying Nick Mosby was going to give her the money.

But, as the forensic accountant testified, he didn’t have that much money in his account. Marilyn Mosby waited until she received her next paycheck and transferred $5,000 to her then-husband. Nick Mosby transferred the money from his checking account to his savings account and back again.
Then, he wired it to an escrow agent for closing. The FBI accountant said the transaction was the only time Marilyn Mosby transferred money to her husband in the five years of the couple’s financial records that were reviewed.

I feel like I’ve got to be missing something here. Why go through all this when she could have just paid the money directly? It might have had something to do with “a federal tax debt that with penalties and interest had grown to $69,000” that she didn’t disclose.

On the whale sushi front:

Mosby faces a maximum of 30 years at sentencing, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. While experts say she won’t receive a punishment anywhere near the maximum, separate federal convictions stemming from two trials makes it much more likely that Mosby, a mother of two, will be incarcerated for some amount of time.

And, on a related note:

Baltimore City Council President Nick Mosby said he regrets lying to the public about the status of his tax returns, a revelation that came last week during the federal trial of his ex-wife Marilyn Mosby, but he remains committed to running for office and sees no potential disruption to his ability to serve.

Wow. This isn’t just flames, this is a four-alarm fire of political corruption.

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan unsealed bribery and extortion charges on Tuesday against 70 current and former employees of the New York City Housing Authority, a sweeping indictment of a troubled organization.

…

In describing the scheme, Mr. Williams said dozens of employees, including superintendents and assistant superintendents, had taken more than $2 million in bribes from contractors seeking to do work at apartment buildings throughout the city’s five boroughs.

…

Prosecutors said that the scheme revealed Tuesday involved small-dollar repairs — under $10,000 — to things like windows and plumbing, deals that do not go through competitive bidding.

According to the NYPost:

The defendants, all of whom were working for NYCHA at the time, sought between 10% and 20% of the contracts’ values — or kickbacks of between $500 and $2,000 — though some asked for higher amounts, authorities said.

This story is still developing. And all suspects are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

In case you were wondering: according to the Justice Department, this is, indeed, the “largest number of federal bribery charges” issued in one day.

Mike the Musicologist sent me a text the other day mentioning that there’s a superseding indictment against Democratic Senator Robert “Buffalo Bob” Menendez.

This seems like reason enough to link the NYT: “What We Know About the Menendez Bribery Case”.

Still on the road, with limited time to blog, but: Marilyn Mosby convicted of two counts of perjury. (Previously.)

In the indictment, prosecutors accused Ms. Mosby of falsely claiming financial hardship tied to the coronavirus pandemic to withdraw money from her city retirement account. While typically a person cannot withdraw money from this type of account until retirement, the CARES Act permitted withdrawals for “adverse financial consequences” tied to the pandemic, such as the loss of a job or reduced work hours.
In 2020, Ms. Mosby requested funds totaling $90,000 from her retirement account, indicating on federal forms that she had been facing financial hardship. But government prosecutors said that Ms. Mosby was not eligible for the disbursements. Instead, payroll documents showed that, in her job as Baltimore City state’s attorney, Ms. Mosby continued to collect an annual salary of nearly $250,000 during the pandemic and had no reduction of her work hours. Prosecutors said that Ms. Mosby used the money to fund down payments for vacation homes in Florida.

She’s facing a second trial on fraud charges related to statements in the mortgage loan applications for the vacation homes.