Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Will DA Hynes’ intra-office fallout taint the Brooklyn GOP ?

Dirty transition at the Brooklyn DA’s office   —   with talk of a Special Prosecutor's investigations   —   is a tar bucket for everybody involved   —   The Brooklyn GOP needs to be in the clear in order to move forward

The Brooklyn GOP has to ask, "Will Hynes' Problems Become Dan Donovan's and rebound back on the GOP as a whole ? "



According to the New York Post, somebody in the Charles “Joe” Hynes brain trust thinks that Hynes, a short-timer in the Office of Kings County District Attorney, needs to prove he is no bigot; and that the sitting DA must to call on a special prosecutor to probe a recently dismissed ADA for allegedly forging an arguably racist or racially insensitive series e-mail messages exchanged between the Hynes and a the former Chief Judge of New York State, Sol Wachtler (See “Outgoing Brooklyn DA wants probe of ‘forged’ bigot e-mails” by Josh Saul, 11/18/13, NY Post - Metro [http://nypost.com/2013/11/18/outgoing-brooklyn-da-wants-probe-of-forged-bigot-e-mails/]).

The story in the Post is quite specific and states, as follows:. “Hynes’ office believes former Brooklyn prosecutor Barbara Burke cooked up an online message to the DA from former Judge Sol Wachtler that used a derogatory Yiddish word for a black person, “schwarze,” to refer to DA-elect Ken Thompson, law-enforcement sources said. ***  When the e-mails were leaked to the Web site BuzzFeed before the election, they tarnished Hynes as racially insensitive for failing to object to the epithet against Thompson, who is black. ***  But a probe of the e-mails by Hynes’ office has concluded that the letters were fabricated by Burke, sources told The Post.”

The Post story goes on to state that the investigation of former ADA Burke is just one sign of a troubled transition as Hynes leaves office. Burke was fired November 8th, allegedly for “poor evaluations”; however the very same Barbara Burke also had been suspected of speaking with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Brooklyn about allegations that Hynes’ office acted unethically in its response to a $150 million wrongful-conviction suit. Speaking up in Burke’s defense, her lawyer, Mark Bederow, said the DA’s claiming his client is a forger is nothing but a  “pathetic”
attempt to smear Ms. Burke.

Now here’s the partisan rub, and a field full of land-mines that GOP operatives need to head off, right away: “... Hynes’ office plans to ask that an outside prosecutor from Staten Island be appointed to further investigate the matter and possibly bring charges,” says the Post’s Josh Saul. The last time I looked, that would be Richmond County District Attorney Dan Donovan, the only Republican-Conservative DA in the City of New York.  Unfortunately, everything that Hynes and Company are complaining about came up during and within-the-context-of  Hynes’ 2013 Republican-Conservative campaign to hold onto his DA seat.

How much of this stuff needs to flow down hill into any part of the City-wide GOP ?  In New York City, the GOP already has soiled itself so much in 2013, that it desperately needs to move on ASAP ? It doesn’t need any more connections with the soon to be former Brooklyn DA.

The same is also true of the Brooklyn GOP.  As with so much of its 2013 campaign strategy that was far closer to being embarrassing than successful in 2013, the book has to be closed on all the disastrous 2013 campaigns  —  especially this hangover of the Hynes’ Republican-Conservative campaign.  That will be best served with a clean break that leaves Hynes and his transition team to fend for themselves   —   and, if they think that investigations and prosecutions are in order, just leave anybody in the GOP out of all of that completely.

They need to tell the Staten Island DA Dan Donovan in no uncertain terms that involving himself in the Hynes’ mess inside the Brooklyn DA’s Office connected to the 2013 Republican-Conservative campaign will have the stench of impropriety attached to it. They need to ask him this question, “ Will Hynes’ Problems Become Dan Donovan's and rebound back on the GOP as a whole ? "

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

I dont think Hynes problems will end when he leaves office. They will begin.
Hynes scams will become Dan Donovans problems.
Thankyou Mike Long. Your doing a hell'uva job.

Anonymous said...

Gale, what do you mean, the Brooklyn GOP has to be in the clear in order to move forward? What are you implying....or actually stating here? Do you know something we don't? My understanding was that Golden and Kassar were the ones pushing Hynes into this race....not the Brooklyn GOP?

Galewyn Massey said...

The entanglement of State Senator Golden and those associated closely with him is well known and clearly a matter of public record.

In addition, other Brooklyn Republicans were also actively supportive of the Hynes re-election effort in the fall of 2013. They included this blog, Brooklyn GOP Chairman Craig Eaton and other newly elected Brooklyn GOP Board members in the non-Marty Golden faction, The Brooklyn Young Republican Club, the Brooklyn YRs and even a club or two. That re-election effort is now over. Any post-election "taking care of business" by the out-going Brooklyn DA or anybody else connected to the Brooklyn DA's office is not any business of the Brooklyn GOP or anybody else who identifies with the GOP.

My post above is a warning and admonition to all Brooklyn Republicans to close the book on and clearly separate from the Democrat DA Charles Hynes during this turbulent post-election "transition" period. This should be open and immediate, and it should include public advice to the Republican-Conservative Staten Island DA Dan Donovan to resist any referral for possible prosecution of vindictive investigations of personnel who worked inside Hynes' office.

Obviously, those who were most closely tied to the Republican-Conservative campaign for Hynes, like Golden and his close allies inside and outside the GOP, need to be the most clear about their separation. Marty Golden's long close association with Dennis Quirk is well-known and documented. He is Hynes' go-to guy in this so-called "transition" -- he is also all tied up in a Staten Island insiders' world that connects to Dan Donovan and the operations of that DA's office.

Anonymous said...

The third comment posted that the Hynes fiasco wasnt a GOP operation but a Conservative party deal should consider reading a newspaper.
The Conservatives, as usual, were calling the shots and we insiders know that. The public does not see it that way.
This was a Republican campaign and the results of 75% to 25% show that it was either handled by Morons or people looking to destroy the GOP.
Bloomberg as GOP candidate got 45% of the vote in Brooklyn in 2009.
The point being if the GOP is going to sacrifice its principles for the sake of winning, than at least win.
The Conservative party leaders have consistently violated GOP space for the purposes of trashing the operation, and then walk away like they had nothing to do with it. That was the point of Kassars column ignoring his latest brainchild move.
Wake up folks.
Next year in race for Governor Long & his crew will finally bury the GOP by running Paladino against Cox.
Than the Conservative party will finally reach its life;long goal to be on Column B.

Galewyn Massey said...

I don't disagree a lot with what you've posted here.

However to be fair, the third comment by "Anonymous ... at 5:03 AM" didn't say it was a "...Conservative [P]arty deal...." That comment maker only mentioned "...My understanding was that Golden and Kassar were the ones pushing Hynes into this race...." You inferred that "Anonymous ... at 5:03 AM" meant the Conservative Party, but there could have been other interpretations of what "Anonymous ... at 5:03 AM" put in the comment. It could as easily have referred only to State Senator Golden and his staff, or Golden's faction of the Brooklyn GOP >>>AND <<< Kassar's folks in the Conservative Party.

Anonymous said...

Golden and Kassar didnt just push hynes into the race, they were pushing him around like it was weekend at Bernies.
The thinking was a DA had not been defeated in 100 years, and a Republican had not been elected in Brooklyn in a 100 years.
Sounds like a plan.

Anonymous said...

if that sounded like a plan, what comes next/ the hynes campaign was a flop. it was openly racist and nobuddy bought into it. the lhota campaign was a flop too. where does that leave m golden and j kassar and m long except with threats to dump skelos and kolb or run with carl paladino/ none of it makes any sense.

Galewyn Massey said...

UPDATE: THE “NOBODY IN THE GOP NEEDS TO BE INVOLVED WITH THIS HEADACHE” EDITION

OR — ALL THAT YOU EVER WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT BROOKLYN ASSISTANT DA BARBARA BURKE BUT WERE AFRAID TO ASK

If you want to see the mess that Brooklyn DA Charles Hynes wants to hand off to Staten Island Republican DA Dan Donovan, it’s all there in black and white in the nation’s newspaper of record, the New York Times (See “A New Dispute Emerges in Brooklyn Prosecutor’s Office” by Frances Robles and Vivian Yee, 11/22/13, NY Times/ Region [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/23/nyregion/a-new-dispute-emerges-in-brooklyn-prosecutors-office.html?ref=nyregion&_r=0]). This story has a little of everything, but mostly it is about a lot of “payback” against Barbara Burke, formerly Barbara Samide, by Hynes and his friends in high places (not all of them specifically mentioned in the New York Times article).

Run away Dan, run very far away — Hynes has a tiger by the tail (or is that "tale" - Yuk ! Yuk ! Yuk !) don’t switch places with him. Better to forget about this insiders’ vendetta; and instead run for NYS AG again; the odds of a good outcome with that are better.