Former NY MP Sheldon Silver convicted of corruption, killed by Reuters

Author: Kanishka Singh

(Reuters) – Sheldon Silver, the then powerful president of the New York State Assembly, has been sentenced to 77-and-a-half years in prison for corruption.

Judy Rapfogel, a former chief of staff, was sentenced to life in prison in Middlesex County, Massachusetts.

Silver began serving his sentence in August 2020, despite his poor health. In January 2020, the U.S. Court of Appeals in Manhattan appealed parts of the 2018 conviction.

In January last year, the U.S. Supreme Court denied Silver’s hearing of an appeal against his conviction for corruption charges.

Silver, a Democrat, has been accused of accepting illegal payments of about $ 4 million in exchange for taking official action under two different schemes.

The prosecutor said Silver had organized state grants to a cancer investigator who referred mesothelioma patients to his law firm and approved the interest in regulating the rental of two real estate developers who sent the business to another law firm.

Silver represented Manhattan’s Lower East Side and served as the Assembly’s spokesperson from 1994 to 2015. Along with former Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo and former Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos, Silver was one of the “three men in a room” who had the effective power to adapt. Legislative priorities in New York.

Former U.S. President Donald Trump thought of giving Silver a pardon, sources told Reuters in January last year.

Silver was initially tried in 2015 and sentenced to 12 years in prison. 2. The circuit overturned that conviction in 2017, citing a 2016 Supreme Court ruling in a case involving former Virginia Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell, who reduced the definition of corruption by public officials.