Former City Councilman Dan Halloran last week was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison.
Former Queens City Councilman Dan Halloran last week was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison for his role in arranging the bribery of city GOP bosses to allow state Sen. Malcolm Smith, a Democrat, to run as a Republican candidate for mayor in 2013; and accepting a cash bribe in exchange for designating tens of thousands of dollars in city funds to a non-profit organization that would allow the money to be embezzled through a no-show job.
Halloran, 42, was convicted last August.
“This was a very serious crime,” U.S. District Judge Kenneth Karas said in the sentencing. “When a public official gets into cars and takes wads of cash or promises public money in return for cash to the politician, it is so troubling. It causes us all to be cynical about our leaders. It causes us to doubt that our leaders are looking after us. And it’s a very serious matter.”
In addition to the prison term, Halloran, who represented the 19th Council District, including College Point, Whitestone, Malba, Bayside, Douglaston, Little Neck, parts of Flushing, and Auburndale, was also sentenced to two years of supervised release, and ordered to forfeit $45,300.
“When elected officials, like Daniel Halloran, not only corrupt themselves but, unseen, corrupt the body politic from within they undermine the public’s confidence in a representative form of government,” U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said last Wednesday.
Smith and co-conspirator Vince Tabone, the former vice chairman of the Queens GOP, were convicted in January for their roles in the bribery conspiracy. They will be sentenced on July 1.
According to Bharara, Halloran participated in “two overlapping criminal schemes that involved the payment of bribes to obtain official action.” He arranged for $110,000 in cash bribes to be paid to leaders of the Republican Party so that they would allow Smith to run for mayor on the GOP ballot line. In return for his efforts, Halloran accepted $15,500 as a down payment on a “broker’s” fee of at least $75,000 and expected to be appointed first deputy mayor if Smith was elected.
Additionally, Bharara noted, Halloran accepted an up-front kickback of $15,000 for designating up to $80,000 of Council discretionary funding to a company “he believed was controlled by those who paid him the bribes.”
At a September 2012 meeting with an undercover Federal Bureau of Investigation agent and a cooperating witness that netted him a $7,500 cash payment, Halloran was recorded saying, “That’s politics, that’s politics, it’s all about how much. Not whether or will, it’s about how much, and that’s our politicians in New York, they’re all like that…And they get like that because of the drive that the money does for everything else. You can’t do anything without the f***ing money.”
At the time of Halloran’s April 2013 arrest, Bharara posited that in light of the myriad public-corruption scandals plaguing the state, “many may rightly resign themselves to the sad truth that perhaps the most powerful special interest in politics is self-interest.”
By Michael V. Cusenza
