Federal prosecutors in New York dropped bribery and fraud charges on Friday against former New York Lt. Gov. Brian Benjamin, citing the death of a cooperating witness against the Democrat who the governor had once chosen to be her second-in-command.
Judge J. Paul Oetken signed an order closing the case against Benjamin after prosecutors told him in a letter that a review of evidence in the case led them to conclude they could no longer prove the charges beyond a reasonable doubt after the death of co-defendant Gerald Migdol.
Migdol died on Feb. 9, 2024. The Harlem real estate developer had pleaded guilty in 2022, admitting that he organized tens of thousands of dollars in fake contributions from 2019 to 2021 as Benjamin was campaigning to be city comptroller, a race he lost.
Benjamin resigned as lieutenant governor after his April 2022 arrest.
“Today’s vindication of Brian Benjamin is a timely reminder of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous words: ‘The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,’" Benjamin's lawyers said in a statement on Friday. “It has been a great honor to represent Brian and we always believed this day would come.”
The arrest created a political crisis for Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul after she had chosen Benjamin as her second-in-command.
She took the state's top elected post after a sexual harassment scandal drove from office her predecessor, Democrat Andrew Cuomo.
Previously, Benjamin had served on the state Legislature, representing most of central Harlem.
