These Cy Vance Scandals Pile Up So Fast I Can't Keep Track

There's no two ways about it -- the DA's office is compromised.

(Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

Add a Columbia University gynecologist who pleaded guilty to a reduced number of sexual assault claims to avoid jail time to the list of scandals plaguing Manhattan DA Cy Vance. This comes after the Ivanka and Don Jr. investigation dropped after a visit from a donor and the Harvey Weinstein investigation dropped despite an explicit recording. If you’ve been following the beleaguered DA’s last month, you already know what comes next, but it turns out the lawyers for the gynecologist accused of assaulting as many as 18 women… donated significant sums to Vance’s campaign.

Because of course. Here’s what the New York Daily News said:

Hadden was represented by Isabelle Kirshner, whose firm and partners have donated $42,000 to Vance since 2008. Kirshner, of Clayman & Rosenberg, donated $250 the same day she submitted a motion opposing the prosecutors’ plan to use evidence from patients whose assaults fell outside the statute of limitations, CBS News reported Saturday. She also donated $1,000 to Vance two months after Hadden was sentenced.

If you’ve followed Above the Law’s coverage of Vance’s travails, you know that I’m not sold on these accusations of some kind of legal payola. It makes for saucy headlines in the local news, but for a man with a job that almost never faces a challenger (only in the last month has he got an opponent in the form of write-in candidate Marc Fliedner), donations aren’t going to compromise his judgment. And, in this case, his office claims this decision was made far below his pay grade anyway.

But that doesn’t make this any less of a scandal.

I repeat, I categorically do not believe Cy Vance is taking money for favors, no matter what aspersions the media cast. But it’s not about money as much as it’s about building relationships The old adage was “a good lawyer knows the law, a great lawyer knows the judge.” In a world where bar associations are earnestly debating whether judges are allowed to be LinkedIn connections with lawyers, how is it acceptable for lawyers to be buying access to a DA? Because — newsflash! — by and large, judges don’t resolve criminal cases in this country, the prosecutors do. A “great lawyer” in 2017 is someone who the DA’s office is willing to give the benefit of the doubt while they negotiate behind closed doors exactly what sentence the defendant’s going to get. Vance doesn’t need to keep a penny of that $42K for this story to raise the appearance of impropriety.

Sponsored

And when this chummy relationship with lawyers representing the relatively well-off is juxtaposed with his office’s heavy-handed fixation on throwing the book at the disproportionately poor and powerless — his Borough sends far more people to jail than Manhattan’s population would justify — the stench grows even worse.

Because if lawyers with clients facing hard time are going around giving donations — months and months before an election, mind you — on the day they’re filing motions, then the office has been compromised. Period. Somewhere along the line, lawyers got the impression that they could earn access and credibility through backing his campaign. Whether or not Vance intended to send that message, it’s a reality now and until he resigns or radically alters how his campaign raises money going forward, the public trust in the office is shot.

And yet, a month into this, there remains no apology for this cavalcade of scandals. Part of the problem is this accusation that he traded donations for results, which he — somewhat justifiably — believes is resolved by returning donations from the lawyers involved. But once you get away from this absurd idea that it’s just about the money and that it’s really about the relationships built when someone expresses the willingness to give you money, you realize that this is a wildly insufficient band-aid.

The office needs new leadership. Whether that’s a new person in Vance’s seat or a new ombudsman of sorts to lay down new rules on how and when Vance the politician collects money is up in the air, but all we know right now is that this regime can’t continue as is. Unfortunately, no one at the DA’s office seems to understand just how bad things have gotten.

Four sexual assault victims say Cy Vance spared pervy Columbia doctor jail time due to campaign donations [New York Daily News]

Sponsored

Earlier: Cy Vance And The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Month
Ivanka And Don Jr. Avoided Indictment The Old-Fashioned Way: By Being Rich
Grabbing Someone By the Privates and Getting Away With It (But Only If You’re Rich And Powerful)
No Jail Time For Convicted Dewey CFO
‘Small Enough To Jail’ Looks At The Only Bank Prosecuted Over The Housing Crisis
Cy Vance Is Manhattan’s Dumb Hamlet
Which Bank Deserves Criminal Prosecution? The Smallest One, Obviously!