FEDERAL prosecutors are continuing to probe an explosive, nearly 2-year-old allegation that former Westchester County District Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s husband leaked information from her office to the mob, The Post has learned.
While many in the state’s political community had assumed the investigation was over, a source familiar with the situation said, “The investigation is ongoing.”
Pirro, the Republican candidate for attorney general, repeatedly refused to say if she’s been notified of any findings from the probe, which she requested last year after the allegation became public.
Megan Gaffney, a spokeswoman for Manhattan U.S. Attorney Michael Garcia, would say only “no comment” when asked by The Post about the investigation.
Garcia’s office, however, is expected to wrap up the probe before the November election, longtime observers agree.
The probe, which then-Manhattan U.S. Attorney David Kelley said was already under way when Pirro publicly requested it 14 months ago, was launched after the FBI recorded Gambino crime-family capo Greg DePalma in October 2004 claiming “the DA’s husband” shared information about an investigation into a corrupt local cop with alleged mob ties.
Pirro repeatedly insisted after the disclosure that no such leak from her office had occurred.
Albert Pirro, who served several months in federal prison after being convicted on felony tax-evasion charges in 2000, also angrily denied the allegation, and publicly threatened a slander-and-libel suit against DePalma.
He filed such a suit in May 2005 against Robert Persico, another alleged mobster with whom DePalma claimed to have discussed details of DA Pirro’s case against the cop.
But the suit was quietly dropped the next month, records in the Westchester County Clerk’s Office show.
A finding that Albert Pirro leaked information from his wife’s office to a mob figure could be fatal to the former DA’s already-uphill effort to succeed Eliot Spitzer as attorney general.
The continuing federal probe may explain why the state Supreme Court’s Appellate Division unexpectedly refused to reinstate Albert Pirro’s law license last week, saying more time was needed to “investigate and report on the respondent’s current fitness to be an attorney.”
Said a source familiar with the situation: “The Appellate Division must know about the investigation and is probably waiting to see what, if anything, comes out of it.”
The Appellate Division, in a statement explaining the decision not to readmit Albert Pirro to the bar, didn’t mention the federal probe but did say it would look into the 2002 bankruptcy filing of Distinctive Properties Ltd., a housing-development company that he owns.
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Long-shot Republican gubernatorial hopeful John Faso is illustrating one of his greatest tactical problems – the inability to point a finger of blame – in a new fund-raising letter to longtime GOP contributors.
“Not only does New York lead the nation in the out-migration of people to other states, but we also have the worst business environment in the nation due to high taxes,” Faso wrote in the letter, which conspicuously avoids noting that the state has had a Republican governor, as well as a GOP-controlled Senate, for the past 11 ½ years.