Former state Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith is at the top of a list of politicians arrested today in a federal probe of corruption in New York politics. The AP reported Smith’s 6:30 came at\u00a0 this morning.<\/p>\n
Our Albany correspondent, Karen DeWitt is chasing the story as it develops, and we’ll have her report in the morning.<\/p>\n
This afternoon, The Albany Times Union reported<\/a> US Attorney Preet Bharara detailed…<\/p>\n an elaborate chart detailing the alleged vectors of money and favors \u2014 with, he noted, “Malcolm in the middle” \u2014 quoted from many of these statements before calling the case yet another sign of “the public corruption crisis in New\u00a0York.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The TU’s Capitol Confidentia<\/a>l bloggers have much more, including excerpts<\/a> from the long complaint filed by Bharara. Here’s one,\u00a0 Queens City Councilman Dan Halloran, speaking with an\u00a0 FBI agent:<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s politics, that\u2019s politics, it\u2019s all about how much. Not about whether or will, it\u2019s about how much, and that\u2019s our politicians in New York, they\u2019re all like that, all like that. And they get like that because of the drive that the money does for everything else. You can\u2019t do anything without the f\u2014ing money.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n