Gov. Paterson demurred on the question of Attorney General Andrew Cuomo recusing himself from two probes into the state’s chief exeuctive — but he did have choice words for at least one person who departed his administration in protest, claiming she acted to serve her political needs.
He made the comments in an interview with Errol Louis on WWRL 1600 AM.
Saying that his decision to pass on the issue of whether anyone interfered in an aide’s domestic violence case to the AG was sending it to the “proper place,” he added, “We knew that the attorney general could investigate it himself or handle it a different way.”
Then he declined to discuss it in depth — but he did tee off on Denise O’Donnell, his deputy for public safety who resigned at the beginning of the scandal. She said then-State Police Superintendent Harry Corbitt lied to her about whether his troopers had any involvement in the case of Paterson aide David Johnson and his then-girlfriend Sherr-una Booker.
“The criminal justice coordinator, I think everybody knows, is running for attorney general, and you will have relationships that get exacerbated at times like that,” he said, then put an entirely new spin on the two departures of top cops — first Corbitt and then seven days later his fill-in, Pedro Perez.
“We got the person we wanted to run the state police,” he said. “To do that we had to move two other people.”
He then blasted the polls asking questions of voters about whether they think he should resign as “anachronistic,” and said he’s precisely where he should be with the budget process: “Everyone talks about what’s distracting me. I don’t know what’s distracting everyone else.”
He maintained again that he hadn’t know of the allegations Booker was making against Johnson, that he violently attacked and choked her on Halloween 2009, until he read news accounts of it in late February.
He added that until people know the facts they can’t judge, adding generally, “Even discussing domestic violence … you would have to know the facts to render a judgment as to what someone actually did.”
And last but not least, he largely embraced the borrowing-heavy plan by budget plan by Lt. Gov. Richard Ravitch that he had been critical of earlier in the week, saying, “I am very happy with this report.”
