Saturday, April 13, 2019

Democrats taking care of their donors





Manhattan DA Cy Vance Jr. may owe his job to the strong endorsement he got from his illustrious predecessor, but it’s been painfully obvious for some time that Vance is no Bob Morgenthau.
The latest sign: News that back in 2011, the deputy chief of Vance’s Sex Crimes Unit made an outrageous plea for leniency for pedophile billionaire Jeffrey Epstein.
This, even though the DA’s office had been given graphic and detailed evidence of how Epstein paid underage girls for erotic massages that often led to rape — and despite a state assessment that he was a clear risk to repeat his crimes.
The state assessors found that Epstein clearly qualified as a Level Three offender. Yet Vance’s office instead asked the court to declare him a Level One, the least restrictive status. Happily, the judge disagreed.
We’re just learning about this eight years later because Team Vance kept it under seal until The Post sued to get it released.
Fact is, this DA seems to have a problem with sex crimes. His office had to drop one of its key charges against pervy producer Harvey Weinstein because it had failed to fully check out the alleged victim’s credibility.
On top of that, it turned out that Weinstein never faced charges from Vance three years earlier despite an incriminating tape recording. And it also came out that Vance had received $26,550 in campaign donations from Weinstein’s lawyer — some of it after the investigation was dropped.
Add to that his growing disinclination to send criminals to prison. His move to stop prosecuting the vast majority of transit fare-beaters, notably, was condemned even by Mayor Bill de Blasio. And Vance has also led the way in halting prosecutions of other quality-of-life offenses whose enforcement was key in the city’s historic turnaround on crime.
At this rate, it’s hard to see how Vance is going to win re-election in 2021.

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