Yesterday, we described Andrew Cuomo's "height of hypocrisy" critique of Jeanine Pirro for spending $150,000 in taxpayer money on overtime for a county driver and then daring to criticize Hevesi.
Somehow, we missed the Pirro response, which basically said that a guy who shamelessly spent taxpayer money in efforts at self-promotion while he was at HUD was scaling higher heights of hypocrisy by complaining about Jeanine's mere $150,000. "He is not only unqualified to be Attorney General, he is unfit for office," says Pirro spokesman John Gallagher.
Full text of the Pirro release after the jump.... Also today, the Times take a swing at the story of fraud in the 203(k) mortgage loan program that occurred on Cuomo's watch at HUD.
Pirro: Cuomo Owes Taxpayers $900G for '02 Campaign Brochures
WHITE PLAINS, NY -- (11/01/2006; 1625)(EIS) -- Attorney General candidate Jeanine Pirro today cited numerous published reports detailing how opponent Andrew Cuomo, during his final days at HUD, spent over $900,000 of federal tax revenue on promotional brochures intended to jump-start his campaign for New York Governor.
"Andrew Cuomo should return the more than $900,000 in taxpayer dollars he spent issuing promotional material to kick-off his gubernatorial campaign when he was HUD Secretary," said Pirro spokesman John Gallagher. "He supports thieves like his running-mate Alan Hevesi and his business partner Andrew Farkas - he should be ashamed of himself."
Cuomo spent $688,857 to print 30,000 copies of "A Vision for Change,"
a 150-page report about his years at HUD that included a narrated compact disc and 19 photographs of Mr. Cuomo with various luminaries.
Then just days before leaving office, he had printed another 62-page brochure - "HUD International" - also paid for with tax dollars, that included no fewer than 15 photos of Cuomo in foreign countries, at a cost of $53,500 (New York Times, 12/11/00, 9/3/02; New York Daily News, 9/1/02; New York Post, 4/16/01; Associated Press, 2/22/01). Also in those final days, a third publication, a 104-page soft cover book entitled "Exposing Injustice," was issued at a cost to taxpayers of either $160,250 (Washington Post, 2/5/01) or $162,509 (Associated Press, 2/22/01).
Cuomo announced his run for governor just nine days after leaving HUD.
"Andrew Cuomo has no legal experience and was a bad manager at HUD who misused taxpayer funds," said Gallagher. "He is not only unqualified to be Attorney General, he is unfit for office."