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DonViejo

(60,536 posts)
Tue Mar 14, 2017, 10:54 AM Mar 2017

Preet Bharara: A Prosecutor Who Knew How to Drain a Swamp - NYT Editorial Board

Most Americans had never heard of Preet Bharara, Manhattan’s federal prosecutor, before he briefly took center stage in the drama over the Trump administration’s Friday order demanding the resignations of 46 United States attorneys.

Mr. Bharara alone refused to resign. He was fired on Saturday, and immediately cast as either a martyr for justice or a sanctimonious self-promoter, depending on one’s partisan inclinations. But New Yorkers, who have had a front-row seat to his work over the last seven years, know him for his efforts to drain one of the swampiest states in the country of its rampant public corruption.

Appointed in 2009 by President Barack Obama, Mr. Bharara quickly went after New York’s rancid political culture, where politicians of both parties have long treated anti-graft laws like suggestions and ethics rules like Play-Doh.

Mr. Bharara won convictions of more than a dozen lawmakers, culminating in 2015, when he brought down two of the state’s three most powerful politicians: Sheldon Silver, the Democratic former Assembly speaker, and Dean Skelos, the Republican former Senate majority leader. Both men have appealed their convictions, which included charges of bribery, extortion and money laundering.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/13/opinion/preet-bharara-a-prosecutor-who-knew-how-to-drain-a-swamp.html?emc=edit_th_20170314&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=57435284

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