By Jonathan Stempel
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Federal prosecutors on Friday dropped their corruption case towards former New York Lieutenant Governor Brian Benjamin, following the dying of a key witness.
Benjamin, 48, had been anticipated to face trial in Manhattan federal courtroom after being accused of funneling a $50,000 state grant to an actual property developer in trade for marketing campaign contributions.
However the developer, Gerald Migdol, who pleaded responsible to bribery and fraud costs and was cooperating with the federal government, died final February.
In a courtroom submitting, prosecutors mentioned that primarily based on a evaluation of the proof and in mild of Migdol’s dying, “the federal government has decided that it may now not show, past an affordable doubt, the fees within the indictment.”
U.S. District Choose Paul Oetken accepted the dismissal request late Friday afternoon.
Benjamin, a Democrat, had confronted costs together with bribery, trustworthy providers wire fraud and conspiracy.
“In the present day’s vindication of Brian Benjamin is a well timed reminder of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr’s well-known phrases: “The arc of the ethical universe is lengthy, however it bends towards justice,'” Benjamin’s attorneys Barry Berke, Dani James and Darren LaVerne mentioned in a joint assertion. “We at all times believed this present day would come.”
Migdol had been an actual property developer in Manhattan’s Harlem neighborhood, the place Benjamin was as soon as a state senator.
Governor Kathy Hochul, additionally a Democrat, tapped Benjamin in August 2021 for the state’s No. 2 job, which she had held earlier than succeeding Andrew Cuomo as governor. Benjamin resigned in April 2022 when the legal costs had been introduced.
