Gov. Kathy Hochul has a major ethics problem, and his name is Lt. Gov. Brian Benjamin.
Federal prosecutors are investigating the former Harlem state senator’s ties to a shady realtor, Gerald Migdol.
The feds want to know what if any role Benjamin played in “straw” donations that Migdol allegedly tried to funnel to his failed campaign for city comptroller last year.
Separately, among multiple phony-looking small Benjamin donations uncovered by The City last year was one from Migdol’s 2-year-old grandson (listed on campaign-finance documents as a “student”), as well as the realtor’s wife.
Once exposed, the campaign returned the 20-plus tainted donations, which would’ve been worth thousands in public matching funds. And headlines last year forced Benjamin to refund his state Senate campaign fund for “constituent services” at a Harlem jazz club where he and his wife threw a wedding celebration attended by Hochul and other electeds.
In February, the Times Union reported on a dozen instances of double-dipping where the then-senator received taxpayer-funded travel reimbursements for expenses charged to his campaign’s credit card. Again, he repaid the campaign after getting caught.
He also has yet to explain why he answered “no” on a background-check form for his current job asking if he’d ever been investigated for such violations, when he knew darn well he had been.
Federal prosecutors are looking into Benjamin’s ties to realtor Gerald Migdol. Stephen Yang Late last week, federal subpoenas were delivered to the state Senate related to $50,000 in Benjamin’s discretionary spending in his former district that went to Migdol’s charity, Friends of Harlem Public Schools Inc., in 2019.
That’s at least two current federal probes, on top of multiple other red flags. If Hochul keeps him as her running mate, she’s proving that she doesn’t really care about corruption.
