Legal News

?Hi Andrew, This is David. Will You Investigate Me, Please??

By Ashby Jones

Update, 10:12 a.m.: NBC News is reporting that New York Governor David Paterson is suspending his 2010 reelection campaign.

The lede to one of the NYT stories on the situation involving New York Governor David Paterson pretty much summed it up: “It had to have been one of the more awkward phone calls that either man had ever experienced.”

True. So true.

After all, you had the embattled Paterson, currently taking heat over allegations that he interfered in a domestic violence case involving an aide, calling Cuomo, who wants his job, asking Cuomo to start an investigation. Even by Albany standards, it doesn’t get more bizarre than that.

The only thing that may have made the call easier is this fact, as the NYT reports: Cuomo couldn’t have said no, even had he wanted to. He has a statutory obligation to investigate.

That said, it’s probably not the type of investigation that Cuomo is going to relish, even if it stands to decimate his rival. The NYT’s Jeremy Peters writes that the move could even be seen as “effective” by Patterson, “who no doubt realizes the glaring conflict of interest he has handed the attorney general.”

"It puts the attorney general in the spot of being both the chief law enforcement officer in the state and someone who also has a political interest," Columbia law professor Richard Briffault told the Times. "So he has to be very careful. It's going to require a lot of delicacy on his part."

And while it may be Cuomo’s responsibility to investigate, he doesn’t necessarily have to do it himself, reports Peters. He could outsource the job elsewhere, like to a former state attorney general, for instance.

But, at least so far, it doesn’t appear that Cuomo has to take that path. Walter Ayres, a spokesman for the New York State Commission on Public Integrity, told the Times that the issue would not pose a conflict so long as Cuomo was not yet an official candidate.

Ayres declined to say what might happen if Cuomo threw his hat in the ring.

"As a matter of law, the attorney general currently is not a candidate, and we can't make decisions based on what might happen in the future," Ayres told the NYT.

For more on the Paterson story, click here for the WSJ’s story Friday; here, here and here for the NYT’s coverage.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on February 26, 2010 (boomark / email).