NY Democratic Lt. Gov. Brian Benjamin resigns after being arrested for campaign finance fraud

After his arrest, Democratic Lt. Gov. Brian Benjamin decided to resign his position as it would be difficult to conduct business from the slammer or out in the exercise yard.

The resignation came just hours after he was indicted by federal prosecutors in Manhattan of five charges of corruption alleging Benjamin tried to trade a state grant for campaign money from a previous campaign for state Senate.

“I have accepted Brian Benjamin’s resignation effective immediately. While the legal process plays out, it is clear to both of us that he cannot continue to serve as Lieutenant Governor,” Gov. Kathy Hochul said.

“New Yorkers deserve absolute confidence in their government, and I will continue working every day to deliver for them,” she added, without realizing the irony of her statement.

Hochul, an unelected Democrat who replaced disgraced Democrat Andrew Cuomo [aka "Handy Andy"] spent the day dodging questions about her selection of Benjamin, the man who replaced her. Instead, she deflected by focusing on the shooting that took place Tuesday morning in Brooklyn.

Anyway, Benjamin's name will likely stay on the ballot because he would have needed to remove it in February and didn't get busted until this month.

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Benjamin’s indictment and resignation should provide Hochul’s Democratic opponents a new opening in their bid to unseat her state’s June 28 primary, a contest the governor appeared to have largely sewn up after Attorney General Letitia James ended her campaign in December. 

Perhaps James' self-serving attacks on scandal-ridden crap weasel Andrew Cuomo came back to bite her somewhere.

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NY Democratic Lt. Gov. arrested in campaign donation scheme

Democrat Lt. Gov. Brian Benjamin

New York Democratic Lt. Governor Brian Benjamin has been arrested Tuesday in a federal corruption investigation. The Democrat had only been in office in that role for seven months but it was ripe with questions and probes into a previous campaign.

The Democrat was charged with bribery, honest services wire fraud, and falsification of records.

Prior to being given the position of Lieutenant Governor, Benjamin was a Democratic state senator from Harlem and joined the unelected Gov. Kathy Hochul in September to fill her former job after she became New York's governor. She received the appointment when Democrat Andrew "Handy Andy" Cuomo was forced to resign due to ongoing inappropriate sexual activities. He did not resign for being responsible for the killing of thousands of elderly New Yorkers in nursing homes due to his stupid Covid policy of filling nursing homes with Covid patients because he was never held responsible.

Two months after Cuomo resigned and Benjamin had joined the Hochul administration, a real estate developer, Gerald Migdol, a real estate developer and lawyer who pushed campaign contributions toward Benjamin's failed bid for NY City comptroller was indicted.

Migdol was accused of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, and aggravated identity theft in illegally handing over donations to Benjamin's campaign.

In an indictment unsealed Tuesday, Benjamin was accused of participating in a scheme to obtain campaign contributions from a real estate developer in exchange for Benjamin’s agreement to use his influence as a state senator to get a $50,000 grant of state funds for a nonprofit organization the developer controlled, a scheme that operated from 2019 to 2021.

The indictment said Benjamin and others acting at his direction or on his behalf also engaged in a series of lies and deceptions to cover up the scheme.

That's a bad thing.

They falsified campaign donor forms, misled municipal regulators and provided false information in vetting forms Benjamin submitted while he was being considered to be appointed as lieutenant governor, the indictment read.

No former accusations was made by prosecutors against Benjamin. His campaign said of Migdol's arrest that it had forfeited any improper donations as soon as they were discovered. It was his hope that this would keep his sorry butt out of prison.

However, more recently, reports emerged saying that subpoenas had been issued to Benjamin regarding the financial issues even before Hochul picked him as lieutenant governor, showing us just how much Hochul has on the ball having never fully vetted him or lying.

Despite her claiming she didn’t know of the subpoenas at the time, Hochul proclaimed her support for Benjamin, and he said that he told state police of the subpoenas as they went though the process of vetting him.

“I have utmost confidence in my lieutenant governor,” Hochul said during a Thursday press conference. “This is an independent investigation related to other people and he’s fully cooperating. He is my running mate.”

There goes our confidence in Hochul. But hey, nobody elected her governor in the first place--she inherited the job from a Democratic sex predator.

“In her first major decision as governor, Kathy Hochul chose a dirty politician to serve as her partner in government and running mate. Brian Benjamin’s shady dealings and corruption were well-documented, but Hochul turned a blind eye and put him a heartbeat away from the governorship,” state Republican chairman Nick Langworthy said in a prepared statement, at the risk of being called a racist for having said something negative about a black person, even though it's true in this case.

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Benjamin was New York State's second Black lieutenant governor. During his state Legislature career, the Democrat emphasized criminal justice reform [seriously] and affordable housing. His district included most of central Harlem, where he was born and raised by Caribbean immigrant parents.

It is unclear as to whether his prison, if convicted, serves jerk chicken.

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