Report: JCOPE Issues ‘Broad Subpoena’ to de Blasio Non-Profit, Also Looking at Donations

The New York Times reports that the Joint Commission on Public Ethics (JCOPE), which is investigating New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s political nonprofit organization Campaign for One New York, has “served a sweeping subpoena on City Hall seeking communications among the mayor, his aides, the nonprofit, its donors and consulting firms that worked for it.”

The new subpoenas come in the wake of last month’s State Supreme Court decision ordering the Campaign for One New York to comply with a prior JCOPE subpoena.

According to the Times, “[t]he scope of the subpoena suggests a widening of the investigation” by JCOPE as to whether the Campaign for One New York illegally lobbied the city in 2015.

The article also notes that lawyers for donors to the Campaign for One New York have also been contacted, and JCOPE appears “on whether some donations from lobbyists or their clients who have business before the city actually constituted undisclosed gifts to the mayor,” because “such undisclosed gifts would violate state lobbying laws.”

A lawyer for the Campaign for One New York pushed back, calling JCOPE’s efforts a “year-and-a-half-long political fishing expedition.”

JCOPE’s inquiry is civil in nature, and is separate from the federal and state criminal investigations that are investigating various aspects of the mayor’s political fund-raising.

The question regarding whether the non-profit illegally lobbied (that is, lobbied without registering with and reporting its activities to JCOPE) is a pretty straightforward one.  But the other issue raised in the article – whether donations to the Campaign for One New York could constitute “illegal gifts” to Mayor de Blasio under state seems to be a novel one.