Vito Lopez and his Hour-of-Power

The Politicker
by Jill Colvin
May 20, 2013

The sign outside Ex-Assemblyman Vito Lopez’s office has already been removed.

Ex-Assemblyman Vito Lopez’s resignation became effective at 9 a.m. this morning, and Assembly officials wasted little time scrubbing all traces of the disgraced legislator online and in Albany.

Mr. Lopez’s official government website has already been government, as has his official Assembly email address. (“Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently,” a message read.) By 10:30 a.m., the nameplate outside his Legislative Office Building had also been removed–apparently forcibly, per a photo tweeted by The New York Times‘ Thomas Kaplan. His name will also be removed from his floor seat, an official said.

At his district office in Brooklyn, phones this morning rang unanswered. “I’m sorry, but there’s no room right now to record your message. Please try again later. Goodbye,” an answering service said.

At Mr. Lopez’s legislative office in Albany, staff reported to work but were apparently unsure of what to do. “I don’t know,” a flustered woman who answered the phone said when Politicker asked if they were still operating.

New York Times
by Thomas Kaplan
May 18, 2013

Facing expulsion from the New York State Legislature over accusations that he sexually harassed several female staff members, a once-powerful assemblyman, Vito J. Lopez, said on Saturday that he would resign on Monday morning.

Mr. Lopez, who had said on Friday that he would seek to remain in office for five weeks before resigning and would then run for the New York City Council, announced his new plan in a one-sentence letter to the Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver.

“I hereby resign the public office of Member of Assembly from the 53rd Assembly District, Kings County, effective 9 a.m. Monday, May 20, 2013,” the letter said, in its entirety.

Mr. Lopez’s lawyer, who has been acting as his spokesman, did not respond to a request for comment on Saturday, and it was not clear whether Mr. Lopez, a Brooklyn Democrat, would continue to pursue his bid for the City Council.

New York Daily News
And the political contributions have come from men AND women, many of whom are familiar that Lopez is facing sexual harassment charges, but are unconvinced he did them or that they were a 'bad thing.'
by Reuven Blau, Celetz Katz and Simone Weichselbaum
May 18, 2013

Assemblyman Vito Lopez is still a ladies’ man.

Scores of Brooklyn women ­ and men, too ­ contributed money to the Democrat’s City Council campaign even as allegations of sexual harassment swirled around him, new campaign finance reports show.

“He doesn't strike me as a type of guy who would do that,” said Diana D’Amato, a restaurant manager and longtime Lopez friend who contributed $2,500 on April 24.

“Everyone is innocent before they are proven guilty.”

Eve Sussman, head of the art collective Rufus Corp. in Greenpoint, gave Lopez $25, according to the campaign reports, filed last week.

Capital New York
by Azi Paybarah
May. 17, 2013

With the looming possibility that he might be expelled from the Assembly next week, Vito Lopez announced today that he will resign after 29 years as an assemblyman.

The announcement comes after the release of two independent reports detailed allegations of sexual harassment against as many as eight female employees, which led Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver to call upon his colleagues to expel him from the chamber.

In a statement released this afternoon, Lopez said he felt "obligated" to finish the remainder of the legislative session which is expected to end on June 20, since he was "overwhelmingly" re-elected to represent Bushwick, Brooklyn this past November.

This afternoon, a spokesman for Silver said his office plans to continue the expulsion process, despite Lopez's plan to resign.

The spokesman, Michael Whyland, released a two-sentence statement. "Assemblymember Lopez should no longer be in public office. We will move forward with our resolution on Monday."

Wall Street Journal
by Erica Orden
May 17, 2013

New York state Assemblyman Vito Lopez, who was one of the chamber's most powerful members until he was ensnared in an ethics investigation that found he sexually harassed staff members, said Friday he plans to resign at the end of the legislative session in June.

Mr. Lopez, who denies harassing his underlings, said he was stepping down in order to run for City Council in November.

"I have maintained my innocence throughout this matter and I believe no criminal investigation should ever have been conducted," the Brooklyn Democrat said in a statement.

"I have made no secret that I intend to run for New York City Council in November, which requires me to resign my current term," he continued. "Nevertheless, because the citizens of my district voted me back into office last November by an overwhelming majority, I feel obligated to serve out this session of the Assembly."

New York Daily news
Despite the horrifying reports and calls for his the Assemblyman's head, Andrea Battaglia still supporting her beau.
by Stephen Rex Brown
May 17, 2013

She's Vito Lopez’s main gal ­ and unlike his fed-up former staffers, she complies with his dress code.

Angela Battaglia, Lopez’s longtime girlfriend, was seen riding in a silver Acura with the revolting assemblyman in Queens on Thursday.

She sported a short red skirt and high heels ­ the same type of outfit the 71-year-old Lopez pestered grossed-out female staffers to wear to work.

The extent of Lopez’s leering interest in other women was laid bare in a stomach-churning report released by the Joint Commission on Public Ethics Wednesday.

Around Christmas 2010, Lopez brazenly told his entire office he wanted to hang mistletoe over one employee’s desk “and give her a kiss,” the report reads.

The woman then suggested Lopez reserve his affections for Battaglia, 60, which only enraged him, the report charges.

New York Daily News
Attorney Gerald Lefcourt wrote in a letter to the state ethics panel that Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver has engaged in his own personal relationships with staffers, and so have several other officials.
by Glenn Blain
May 16, 2013

Trying to beat back salacious allegations against his client, the lawyer for creepy Assemblyman Vito Lopez dropped a bombshell, accusing Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver of inappropriate personal conduct.

“It is no secret, except perhaps from the public, that stories of the speaker’s serial and sometimes overlapping personal relationships with his own staff have long circulated in Albany,” attorney Gerald Lefcourt wrote in a letter to a state ethics panel.

He went on to suggest that those relationships may have led the Assembly to quietly settle two initial harassment complaints against Lopez with $103,000 in taxpayer funds.

In an email to the Daily News on Wednesday night, Silver spokesman Michael Whyland denounced the accusation as “despicable and false.”

The Politicker
by Ross Barkan
May 15. 2013

Although Assemblyman Vito Lopez was cleared of criminal charges today, the same can not be said of a highly-revealing report from the New York State Joint Commission on Public Ethics–which concluded that Mr. Lopez fostered a shockingly sordid work environment in clear violation of official standards of conduct.

In the scathing 68-page report, Mr. Lopez–who was stripped of his powerful committee chairmanship and his position atop the Brooklyn Democratic Party after sexual harassment allegations first surfaced last year­engaged in such acts as hanging mistletoe in his district office and forcibly kissing a staffer, shoving his hand “all the way up” the inner thigh of another staffer and more. Mr. Lopez has insisted he’s done nothing wrong.

With minimal paraphrasing, Politicker has compiled some of the most shocking findings detailed in the JCOPE report:

1. The Pink Eye Incident

One female Lopez staffer described her interactions with her boss as something like a “domestic abuse relationship” in which one “can’t leave.” In a text message exchange, this staffer, referred to in the report as Employee 2, told another staffer, Employee 3, that Lopez had asked why she didn’t wear mini skirts and Employee 3 replied, “Oh my god! That’s sexual harassment!!!! WTF!!!!!!.” In June of 2011, Employee 2 would contract pink eye after assenting to place eye drops in Mr. Lopez’s infected eyes.

New York Post
by Beth DeFalco and Sally Goldenberg
May 15, 2013

State Assemblyman Vito Lopez, who was accused of groping young female staffers, is not expected to be charged criminally following a months-long investigation, The Post has learned.

Staten Island District Attorney Dan Donovan, who is operating as a special prosecutor, is expected to announce today that his investigation didn’t find enough evidence to charge Lopez, sources told The Post.

The harassment allegations lodged by two Lopez staffers last summer led to the revelation that Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver had quietly authorized a payment of $103,000 in taxpayer funds to settle previous allegations by two other women against Lopez.

The controversy rocked the state’s political hierarchy and sparked an investigation by the state’s Joint Commission on Public Ethics.

In February, the commission issued a scathing 58-page report to the Legislative Ethics Commission and Donovan, who asked the LEC not to release it until his investigation into the allegations was finished.

New York Times
by Danny Hakim
May 15, 2013

Assemblyman Vito J. Lopez, a Brooklyn Democrat accused of sexual harassment by female employees, will not face criminal charges for his conduct, but a special prosecutor investigating his behavior criticized the State Assembly for its handling of the allegations.

“Certainly, what we found is alarming,” Daniel M. Donovan, Jr., the Staten Island district attorney who was appointed special prosecutor in the case, said of Mr. Lopez’s conduct in a seven-page statement released Wednesday. But Mr. Donovan said Mr. Lopez had not committed “a chargeable crime” in Brooklyn, where the prosecutor had jurisdiction.

Mr. Donovan, a Republican, criticized the Assembly at some length for its handling of the complaints, which were initially kept quiet by the staff of the Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver, a Democrat. When the first two women complained about Mr. Lopez’s conduct, Mr. Silver’s staff negotiated confidential settlements with them, and did not refer their complaints to the Assembly’s ethics committee.