The Cuomo and Pirro camps continued bickering over speaking fees today.
Republican Jeanine Pirro pointed to news releases from the Housing and Urban Development department in 1999 and 2000 showing a $118,060 grant to Kansas State University and $398,529 to Ball State University in Indiana, while Andrew Cuomo was overseeing the agency.
Pirro then pointed to Democrat Cuomo’s federal ethics filings, which showed his family income including speaking fees from Kansas State ($2,625 for a speech in March 1999) and Ball State ($3,000 for a speech in 1997).
"These filings not only show that Andrew Cuomo collected, as family income, honoraria. But worse yet, he was collecting it from universities vying for HUD grants," Pirro said.
Pirro’s statement doesn’t note that Cuomo’s then-wife Kerry Kennedy Cuomo earned the speaking fees, though his ethics filing has a little "s" next to the entries, which total $122,323, meaning all the money came to Kerry.
The Cuomo camp discovered this slight of hand Tuesday and called Pirro on it.
"Mrs. Pirro owes Andrew an apology for repeating her false attack and glaring mistake that Andrew received fees for speeches while at HUD and is now trying to cover up for her flagrant error by hurling new off-base charges," Cuomo spokeswoman Wendy Katz said today.
Katz then went for the jugular, referring to Pirro’s troubled marriage and husband’s imprisonment for tax evasion.
James T. Madore
Katz said, "Mrs. Pirro’s more than decade-long position was that a woman is not an ‘appendage’ of her husband and that a woman’s work and business matters are totally separate from her husband. She therefore refused to disclose her husband’s business dealings or explain the obvious conflicts between his clients and her service as Westchester DA. If Mrs. Pirro is reversing herself and her new position is that a wife is not independent from her husband's work and income (a blatantly anti-woman position) then for the first time she is admitting responsibility for her husband's felonious income tax fraud, from which she benefited, and confirming her being a beneficiary of every cent of income Mr. Pirro has and is currently earning.
"If Mrs. Pirro really believes this, then she will of course finally come clean to New Yorkers [and] disclose: ALL tax returns filed jointly with her husband, all of Mr. Pirro's clients, business and financial records, and any potential conflict whatsoever between his work and income and her work in public life from the very first day she began her service in Westchester. Based on her new position, she now also assumes responsibility and liability for Al Pirro’s felony tax conviction, which she previously said was his independent business and financial dealings."
Katz concluded, "At the very least, that would also include disclosing any possible conflict with Michael Santangelo, who is Mr. Pirro’s defense attorney, who also defended clients at the same time she was prosecuting them in Westchester County court; Anthony Mangone who won a plea deal from Mrs. Pirro and is now a business partner with Santangelo; and every hospital Mr. Pirro has represented while Mrs. Pirro claims she was handling Medicaid fraud cases and the casinos, real estate developers, liquor companies, local political officials who paid Mr. and Mrs. Pirro while she served as DA and any other public position she held in Westchester."
Pirro has released 12 years of income tax returns compared with Cuomo’s 14.