Whipped Cream Difficulties

A while back, I wrote about Burnet County Judge James Oakley, who had just been indicted on both felony and misdemeanor charges.

A jury found him not guilty of one charge, and a judge threw out the other charges. However, a panel of judges from the Third Court of District Appeals recently ruled that judge “erred” in his decision.

Judge Oakley was also reprimanded by the State Commission on Judicial Conduct earlier this month.

One of the things he’s accused of is removing the lock to Justice of the Peace Lisa Whitehead’s courtroom door. Whitehead ended up filing a formal complaint over safety concerns after she said she could not find a “workable solution” with Oakley.
Oakley also faces allegations of sexual harassment from Whitehead that stem from 2023 and for creating a “hostile work environment.”

Judge Oakley resigned on Wednesday. For what it may be worth, the text of his reprimand is included in the linked KXAN article.

You know, there’s been so much corruption in the Eric Adams administration, I’ve kind of lost track myself.

But being as this is possibly the most corrupt administration in the history of New York City, you’ve got to ask yourself one question: do I feel like doing two flaming hyenas in one day?

Well, do I, punk?

Ingrid Lewis-Martin, the former top aide to Mayor Adams, was officially indicted today, along with her son and two “businessmen”.

Allegedly, they were getting paid by check, “which her son cashed and used to buy a Porsche and other luxury items”.

Ms. Lewis-Martin, her son, Glenn Martin II, and the businessmen were charged in a four-count indictment with participating in “a long-running bribery, money-laundering and conspiracy scheme.” The indictment accuses Ms. Lewis-Martin of using her official position to “illegally influence Department of Buildings and other city decisions” in exchange for the cash and other benefits for her and her son.

…

Prosecutors also accused Ms. Lewis-Martin and her son of accepting financial support from the two businessmen for a clothing line and a Chick-fil-A franchise in exchange for her using her city position to assist with their projects.
As evidence, prosecutors quoted from telephone conversations involving Ms. Lewis-Martin, her son and others, suggesting they may have wiretapped one or more of the defendants’ phones.

…

The businessmen charged alongside her were pursing construction projects that included work on a rooftop bar, the Glass Ceiling, and a hotel, both in Manhattan, and they had asked her to help move the projects through the city’s tangled bureaucracy.
After Mr. Dwivedi and Mr. Vaid paid Mr. Martin $100,000 in August 2023, he deposited the money into a joint account he shared with Ms. Lewis-Martin, prosecutors said. Each businessman made a $50,000 payment to Mr. Martin; one had the words “personal loan” written in the check memo, according to prosecutors, who called that an attempt to conceal a bribe and said the defendants had not provided any evidence that loan payments were ever made.

…

Prosecutors, in their narrative, included as an exhibit a picture of Mr. Martin in sunglasses, grinning in front of a gleaming black 2023 Porsche Panamera, a big red bow affixed to the hood. He paid $113,000 for the car, “something neither he nor Lewis-Martin could have funded without the bribe money,” the prosecutors wrote.

…

Prosecutors said Ms. Lewis-Martin used her son as an intermediary in an attempt to cover up her actions. Mr. Martin, 38, a professional D.J. who uses the name “Suave Luciano,” has worked at city events overseen by Mr. Adams’s administration, both when Mr. Adams was mayor and Brooklyn borough president.

Noted:

During the same period she was using Signal to field requests from Mr. Vaid and forward them to city buildings officials, Ms. Lewis-Martin set her Signal messages to disappear after an hour, prosecutors said.

COMSEC! Hurrah! Obviously not a perfect effort, but it has been so rare to see someone even trying to secure their communications, attention must be paid.

Oh. Her lawyer vigorously denies the charges:

“To think that a high-ranking city official would take a bribe in the form of a check deposited into a bank account defies common sense,” he said. “We look forward to the citizens of the City of New York, who Ingrid has served so admirably for decades, clearing her name after a trial.”

Ms. Lewis-Martin resigned over the weekend, apparently in anticipation of the indictment.

Boston City Councilor Tania Fernandes Anderson was arrested this morning.

Fernandes Anderson, 45, was indicted on five counts of aiding and abetting wire fraud and one count of aiding and abetting theft concerning a program receiving federal funds, according to court records and a publicly available indictment.

One of the charges against her is that she gave a staff member a $13,000 bonus payment…most of which was then kicked back to Ms. Fernandes Anderson.

“At defendant Fernandes Anderson’s instructions, Fernandes Anderson and Staff Member A arranged to meet at a bathroom at City Hall where Staff Member A would hand approximately $7,000 in cash to Fernandes Anderson,” court documents said.
The two exchanged texts ahead of the meeting and “shortly following these texts, Staff Member A handed Fernandes Anderson Approximately $7,000 in cash at a bathroom in City Hall,” court documents said.

Ms. Fernandes Anderson makes $115,000 a year as a city councilor. That’s decent money, in my opinion, but the cost of living in Boston is probably much higher than it is in Austin. And Ms. Fernandes Anderson has money problems, per the report.

Those money problems include $5,000 she owes “campaign finance regulators”, as she also has a problem with hiring relatives (her son and daughter) for her staff. “Staff Member A” is also a relative (“but was not an immediate family member”), but Ms. Fernandes Anderson denied that when “A” was hired.

Boston Globe (archived). The Globe mentions her party affiliation in paragraph 7, while the Herald doesn’t mention it at all.