How do you make a threat without directly making a threat? Well, anybody who has ever watched a mob movie can answer that question. In the movie “The Untouchables,” when Al Capone wanted to threaten Eliot Ness, he didn’t say “I’m going to kill your family.” Instead, he sent his enforcer Frank Nitti who made the threat for him in the most anodyne way possible.
“Nice to have a family. A man should take care. See that nothing happens to them.”
Ness got the message, and sent his family out of town to keep them safe.
Andrew Cuomo has his own enforcer. And like Frank Nitti, this enforcer doesn’t flat-out issue a threat. But folks are getting the message.
Out of nowhere, Cuomo’s “COVID Vaccine Czar” has been calling New York County Executives asking them if they support Governor Cuomo during his current travails.
One unnamed Democrat County Executive found the call Nitti-level creepy and filed an ethics complaint.
“Unnamed” because, even though it wasn’t a direct threat, the guy isn’t dumb enough to go on the record with the press. Why give Cuomo another reason to send another enforcer, know what I mean?
After the story broke, said Vaccine Czar Enforcer Larry Schwartz claimed he wasn’t calling in his official capacity, but as a close personal friend of Andrew Cuomo.
Sure! And Frank Nitti was just a drinking buddy of Capones who had a general concern about family safety.
As the New York Post put it in an Editorial today:
Given how Team Cuomo operates, the threat didn’t even have to be voiced: Cross the governor, and your county will get fewer of the life-saving pharmaceuticals. That it was Larry Schwartz, a longtime Cuomo loyalist, making the call sent that message all by itself.
Even if Schwartz intended no such thing, it was massively wrong to have him work the phones for this purpose. The mere appearance of politicizing the vaccine is appalling.
By itself, this is grounds for immediate impeachment. Worse, it demonstrates yet again that nothing is below this governor and his inner circle. If they’ll threaten innocent lives in the middle of a pandemic just to get minor political support, they’ll sell out the public on any and all fronts just to buy Cuomo more time.
Truth is, Schwartz has been considered Cuomo’s enforcer for quite some time.
In fact, the New York Post referred to him as just that back in 2019 when Schwartz was on the MTA’s board. They even used it in a June 2019 headline: “Questions after Cuomo’s MTA enforcer missed deadlines for disclosure form.”
Schwartz, Cuomo’s former chief of staff, had been in violation for a month of state law requiring a full account of his finances, which can identify potential conflicts of interest. The governor appointed him to the MTA board in 2015.
Schwartz is known for aggressively championing Cuomo’s agenda, most recently by pressing the agency to hire a former prosecutor to examine overtime abuses.
Oh, yeah. This guy calling County Executives to gauge their support for Cuomo is totally on the up-and-up and is not in any way a carefully-couched threat to hinder vaccine distribution based on how the county execs might answer.
Nope.
He’s as pure as the wind-driven snow.
You would have to be the most naïve person on the planet to not get what’s going on here.
Or, you have to be someone who is completely ignorant to the underhanded workings of New York politics under the Cuomo regime.
Leaked emails obtained by the New York Post back in February of this year show Schwartz has already been threatening to withhold vaccines from county executives who did not comply with Cuomo’s insane vaccine mandates.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to noodle out what’s going on here.
The Enforcer is using the life-saving vaccine as a bargaining chip to muscle New York politicians into supporting Andrew Cuopone.
This is New York State under the strong arm of Andrew Cuomo, you guys.
It has always, always been this way.
And this is exactly why when the media and Hollywood started fawning all over this thug of a governor a year ago, it pissed me off so much I went to the mattresses.
Last Friday, in yet another “I won’t resign” press conference, Andrew Cuopone claimed that he is not part of the political club.
Is he kidding?
In New York State he IS the club. This is exactly why his Vaccine Czar Enforcer was making these calls – to remind every County Exec just who calls the “shots” in New York.