Bribery, fraud charges dropped against former New York Lt. Governor

NEW YORK — Federal prosecutors on Friday dropped bribery and fraud charges against former New York Lt. Gov. Brian Benjamin, citing the death of a cooperating witness against the Democrat who the governor had once chosen to be her second-in-command.

Judge J. Paul Oetken signed an order closing the case against Benjamin after prosecutors told him in a letter that a review of evidence in the case led them to conclude they could no longer prove the charges beyond a reasonable doubt after the death of co-defendant Gerald Migdol.

Migdol died on Feb. 9, 2024. A funeral home obituary at the time provided no cause of death. The Harlem real estate developer had pleaded guilty in 2022, admitting that he organized tens of thousands of dollars in fake contributions from 2019 to 2021 as Benjamin campaigned to be city comptroller, a race he lost.

Benjamin resigned as lieutenant governor after his April 2022 arrest.

''Today's vindication of Brian Benjamin is a timely reminder of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous words: ‘The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,'" Benjamin's lawyers said in a statement on Friday.

Defense lawyers Barry Berke, Dani James and Darren LaVerne said they "always believed this day would come.''

The arrest created a political crisis for Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul after she had chosen Benjamin as her second-in-command.

She took the state's top elected post after a sexual harassment scandal drove from office her predecessor, Democrat Andrew Cuomo.

Benjamin previously had served in the state Legislature, representing most of central Harlem.

The case against Benjamin had not gone smoothly for prosecutors before Migdol's death.

In December 2022, Oetken tossed out the bribery and fraud charges, leaving only records falsification charges against Benjamin.

In a written opinion, Oetken wrote that prosecutors failed to allege an explicit example in which Benjamin provided a favor for a bribe, an essential element of bribery and honest services fraud charges.

Last March, however, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan reinstated the charges, saying an indictment in the case ''sufficiently alleged an explicit quid pro quo.''

The appeals court said a jury could infer from facts in the case that Benjamin promised to allocate $50,000 in state funds to a nonprofit organization controlled by Migdol in return for campaign contributions from the developer.

At the time, Berke said on his client's behalf that the ''facts are clear that Mr. Benjamin did nothing other than engage in routine fundraising and support a nonprofit providing needed resources to Harlem public schools.''

The Supreme Court had recently declined to hear an appeal of the 2nd Circuit's decision.

A spokesperson for prosecutors declined to comment Friday.