Paterson Misled Inquiry Over Tickets, Report Says
By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE
Published: August 26, 2010
Gov. David A. Paterson misled state investigators about his acceptance of free tickets to the World Series last year, according to the independent counsel, Judith S. Kaye, who has asked the Albany County district attorney to determine whether Mr. Paterson should be charged with perjury.
Nathaniel Brooks for The New York Times
A report found Gov. David Paterson’s testimony about his plans to pay for World Series tickets “misleading.”
Related
Perjury Inquiry May Outlast the Governor’s Term (August 27, 2010)
Document: Kaye Report on Yankee Tickets
A report issued by Ms. Kaye on Thursday found that Mr. Paterson “was inaccurate and misleading” when he told state ethics investigators in February that he had always intended to pay for four $425 tickets he obtained for guests he brought to the opening game at Yankee Stadium, including his son and his son’s friend.
The report said the governor, a Democrat, sought to pay for the tickets only after an inquiry from a New York Post reporter.
“Evidence developed in the investigation indicates that, contrary to the governor’s testimony, he had not formed an intent prior to the game that the tickets other than his own would be paid for,” according to the report by Ms. Kaye, the former chief judge of the New York State Court of Appeals.
Ms. Kaye said the Albany County district attorney, P. David Soares, must determine whether Mr. Paterson had intentionally lied to the investigators, a precondition for charging him with perjury. It was unclear on Thursday how quickly Mr. Soares would decide whether to charge Mr. Paterson; it is certainly possible that his investigation will outlast Mr. Paterson’s term in office, which ends on Dec. 31.
In a statement, Mr. Paterson’s lawyer, Theodore V. Wells Jr., said that “the governor did not lie when he testified about the Yankee tickets” and that Mr. Paterson was “hopeful that D.A. Soares will ultimately conclude that no criminal charges are warranted.”
While it has been common practice in the past for politicians to receive complimentary seats to sporting events, a state ethics ruling in 2008 made clear that the law prohibits state officials from soliciting or accepting such tickets in most cases.
After news media reports about Mr. Paterson’s attendance at the game elicited shifting explanations from the administration about whether the tickets were paid for, the state’s Commission on Public Integrity began an investigation.
In March, the commission concluded that Mr. Paterson had never intended to pay for the tickets — and more important, that he had lied during his testimony to the commission, which referred the matter to Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo and Mr. Soares as well.
Mr. Cuomo, at the time planning a run for governor against Mr. Paterson, in turn appointed Ms. Kaye as independent counsel, giving her the legal authority to bring criminal charges against Mr. Paterson. Her report does not explain why she chose to delegate that decision to Mr. Soares, except to note that Mr. Soares, as district attorney, has “original and ultimate responsibility for prosecutorial decisions regarding crimes and offenses arising in Albany County.”
Ms. Kaye’s investigators never interviewed the governor; they relied instead on his previous testimony to the ethics commission. Her report states that Ms. Kaye chose to leave the decision to seek sworn testimony from Mr. Paterson to Mr. Soares “so that the district attorney has the opportunity to make these decisions in the context of the exercise of his prosecutorial discretion.”
While some critics suggested the baseball tickets and the governor’s attendance at the game were trivial matters, the commission asserted that the question of Mr. Paterson’s truthfulness warranted examination by prosecutors.
The commission’s inquiry revealed some troubling miscommunications and conflicting statements among key players in Mr. Paterson’s administration.
During the baseball playoffs of 2009, Mr. Paterson originally told his staff that he had been invited to the World Series opening game by Randy Levine, the team’s president, when the two had appeared on the cable station CNBC together. It turned out that, despite what the governor said, the two men were not present in the same studio for the show and never spoke about the governor’s possible attendance at the game.
And, despite the lack of an invitation, Mr. Paterson’s close aide, David W. Johnson, had instructed another aide to contact the Yankees to secure “five or six” free tickets to Game One. When the Post reporter, after the game, began inquiring into the tickets, Mr. Paterson and Mr. Johnson gave so many different explanations for how they secured the tickets to Mr. Paterson’s communication director that the director, Peter E. Kauffmann, wrote in an e-mail to other aides: “There may be a chronology of comments by me with at least 4 versions of whether or not we would pay or have to pay or are paying, etc.”
In addition, Mr. Paterson told investigators then that he had brought a check with him to the stadium on the day of the game to pay for some of the tickets, and later gave it to Mr. Johnson to send to the Yankees.
Both the commission and Ms. Kaye’s report concluded that the check in question had not been brought to the stadium that day and had actually been filled out, backdated and signed by Mr. Johnson. (Mr. Johnson, invoking his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself, has not testified under oath about the matter.)
Suggestions that a governor should be investigated for possible criminal prosecution for perjury would usually be devastating. But Mr. Paterson, who this year abandoned his bid for election amid revelations that his administration intervened in a domestic violence episode involving Mr. Johnson, has already seen his credibility deeply damaged by other scandals.
Last month, Ms. Kaye concluded a separate investigation, also referred to her by Mr. Cuomo, into whether Mr. Paterson and members of his administration broke the law by repeatedly contacting the victim in the case, Sherr-una Booker, after a fight with Mr. Johnson on Oct. 31, 2009. While Ms. Kaye did not recommend criminal charges against the governor, her report in that matter included several instances in which Mr. Paterson appeared to mislead those around him.
In one instance last February, Mr. Paterson ordered his staff to draft a statement from Ms. Booker stating that “there was nothing acrimonious” about her relationship with Mr. Johnson, even though the governor knew then that the Oct. 31 fight had ended with Ms. Booker’s calling 911.
Asked later by Ms. Kaye’s investigators whether he considered the statement accurate or inaccurate, Mr. Paterson replied, “I would say it was neither.”
The Bronx district attorney’s office on Aug. 12 arraigned Mr. Johnson in the dispute with Ms. Booker on charges of assault, menacing, harassment and criminal mischief, all misdemeanors.
Mr. Johnson’s lawyer, Oscar Michelen, declined on Thursday to comment on Ms. Kaye’s findings.
The commission is seeking civil penalties of more than $93,000 against Mr. Paterson for violating the gift ban. He did not appear at a hearing in that matter last week.
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