With the Senate GOP narrative about the Spitzer administration effort to discredit Majority Leader Joseph Bruno becoming less of a hot commodity in most news media, this story by the Bruno-vexed Times Union in Albany pushes the other way -- replete with officially-unanswered questions about the Brunswick Republican's meetings with the Lenora Fulani faction of the state Independence Party and interactions with an organization of weird description called NXIVM.
For years, Mayor Michael Bloomberg played nice with the Fulanistas and some of us recall that even the supposedly irascible Rudy Giuliani pulled punches when facing some questioning from her on the statewide campaign trail back in 2000 -- despite her faction's established history of anti-Semitic invective.
The NXIVM group has its own, separately odd story, related recently here in New York Magazine, with other facets broken by the New York Post, which turned the story in the direction of the Clintons here. Roger Stone, recently dismissed by the Bruno organization for his alleged bizarre phone call to Spitzer's father, is described as employed by NXIVM.
UPDATE: It'll be interesting to see if former Spitzer communications director Darren Dopp's future endeavors on behalf of Patricia Lynch's lobbying firm will involve business before Bruno's state Senate. Albany, after all, is a small galaxy.
Dan Janison
Comments (1)
This article about these people in The Intelligencer may explain why the Fulanistas did not challenge Frank MacKay in court yet over his B. S. attempt to be the national leader of the Independence Party.