MANHATTAN (CN) — Former New York Lieutenant Governor Brian Benjamin must face the previously dismissed bribery and corruption charges that led to his resignation two years ago, a federal appeals panel ruled Friday morning.
The Second Circuit reversed a lower court ruling dismissing three counts of bribery and honest services wire fraud against Benjamin on the grounds that prosecutors failed to adequately plead an explicit quid pro quo between him and a campaign donor.
“We conclude that the indictment sufficiently alleged an explicit quid pro quo,” the appeals panel wrote in an unsigned opinion.
U.S. District Judge J. Paul Oetken threw out the charges in December 2022, finding that the original five-count indictment against Benjamin failed to explicitly lay out the evidence of quid pro quo bribery.
The indictment accused Benjamin, now 47, of taking bribes from Harlem real estate developer Gerald Migdol, whose nonprofit organization in Harlem received $50,000 in state funds after Migdol steered campaign contributions toward Benjamin’s failed 2021 bid for New York City comptroller.
On appeal, the Second Circuit panel found that federal prosecutors plausibly outlined a quid pro quo when they described how Benjamin solicited and received campaign contributions from co-defendant Migdol “in exchange for” Benjamin’s agreement to use his official authority and influence to obtain a state grant for one of Migdol’s Harlem non-profit organizations.
“We agree with the government that the phrase ‘in exchange for’ in both paragraphs satisfied the quid pro quo requirement of McCormick because it alleged an unambiguous agreement to exchange an official public act by Benjamin for financial contributions from Migdol,” the judges write in the opinion. “The fact that the agreement was never stated expressly is immaterial because the existence of the agreement, and the clarity of its terms to Migdol and Benjamin, could be inferred from their words and actions.”
The Second Circuit panel was composed of U.S. Circuit judges Dennis Jacobs, a George H. W. Bush appointee; Amalya L. Kearse, a Carter appointee; and Steven Menashi, a Trump appointee.
“Benjamin had fair warning that his alleged agreement with Migdol was illegal and that it would not become legal if he simply avoided memorializing it expressly in words or in writing,” the judges concluded later in their unsigned opinion.
Migdol, a key witness against Benjamin in the bribery scheme, died last month. He pleaded guilty to related charges in 2022 and was cooperating with prosecutors. He was set to be sentenced this week.
When he was charged in the Southern District of New York, Benjamin had served for just six months as second-in-command to New York Governor Kathy Hochul, after sitting as state senator in New York from 2017 to 2021.
He pleaded not guilty to the federal indictment in April 2022, and was released on a $250,000 personal recognizance bond.
Benjamin, the Harlem-born son of Caribbean immigrants, is the second Black lieutenant governor in the state's history.
The first was David Paterson, also a former state senator from Harlem, who was elected lieutenant governor in 2006 and took over as governor in 2007 when Governor Eliot Spitzer resigned in a sex scandal.
Paterson had his own corruption scandal during his last year in office, ultimately causing him to withdraw his bid for a full term as governor of New York. Though he never faced criminal charges, the Commission on Public Integrity would later find that Paterson had lied about accepting five free tickets to the World Series and fined him $62,125.
The scandal over the tickets broke in March 2010, about a month after Paterson was implicated in witness-tampering claims after he reached out to a woman who had accused one his staffers of domestic abuse.
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