{"id":5080,"date":"2011-11-16T15:23:37","date_gmt":"2011-11-16T20:23:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/?p=5080"},"modified":"2011-11-22T09:43:22","modified_gmt":"2011-11-22T14:43:22","slug":"breaking-joe-bruno-gets-retrial-conviction-vacated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2011\/11\/16\/breaking-joe-bruno-gets-retrial-conviction-vacated\/","title":{"rendered":"Breaking:  Joe Bruno gets retrial; conviction vacated"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Joe Bruno, who was born and raised in Glens Falls, will get a new trial following a decision today by the 2nd US Court of Appeals in Manhattan.<\/p>\n<p>The once-powerful former Senate Majority Leader was convicted in 2009 of improperly concealing a deal with a business consultant.<\/p>\n<p>According to the<a href=\"http:\/\/poststar.com\/news\/local\/federal-appeals-court-rejects-bruno-conviction-permits-retrial\/article_a439da5c-1075-11e1-b738-001cc4c002e0.html\"> Associated Press<\/a>, prosecutors may use the new trial to introduce evidence of further charges, including allegations that he &#8220;received $280,000 in return for taking official actions on behalf of the business associate.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Bruno has maintained his ties to the North Country.\u00a0 After his retirement from the Senate, Bruno worked for CMA Consulting, baed in Latham, which is headed by Kay Stafford, widow of former North Country state Senator Ron Stafford.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s unclear whether a retrial will once again involve current state Senator Betty Little.<\/p>\n<p>In 2009, Sen. Little was called to testify about Bruno&#8217;s decision to grant more than $250,000 in job training money to a union in her district.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s an account of that testimony from the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/11\/12\/nyregion\/12bruno.html?_r=1&amp;ref=nyregion\">New York Times<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Looking sheepish, Ms. Little confessed that&#8230;no one at the union had ever asked her for the two  grants, which were for $100,000 in 2006 and $150,000 in 2007. Instead,  aides to Mr. Bruno told her that the senator was interested in  dispensing the grant and offered to bring her on as a co-sponsor.<\/p>\n<p>Though  a public disclosure form for the first grant is dated April 2006, the  grant does not appear to have actually been executed until December \u2014  some months after Local 773 invested $4 million of pension money with  Wright [a firm that Bruno worked for].<\/p>\n<p>And though Mr. Bruno and Ms. Little were both listed as sponsors  of the grant, only Ms. Little signed the disclosure form.\u00a0 Ms. Little was asked when, exactly, she signed it. \u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>Do you know if it was backdated? \u201cNo, I don\u2019t,\u201d she replied.<\/p>\n<p>And why didn\u2019t Mr. Bruno sign it? \u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d she repeated.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Joe Bruno, who was born and raised in Glens Falls, will get a new trial [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[4872,20],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5080"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5080"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5080\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5081,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5080\/revisions\/5081"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}