DA Needs to Examine Stonewalling on Noam Bramson, Sara Kaye Emails
New Rochelle has not retained decades worth of emails from government officials.
NEW ROCHELLE, NY (December 7, 2023) — I debated long and hard whether to curate the email threads that took place since I began to investigate allegations of conflicts of interest involving Mayor Noam Bramson and Council member Sara Kaye and their membership on the board of Sustainable Westchester.
This material is a tough slog even for the initiated that will likely not be read by even the most motivated readers. It shows the sort of sausage-making that goes on behind the scenes when I investigate and report out stories of public-sector corruptions. I only rarely make it public if not for the simple reason that I invariably have to work with some of the same people in the future. Stonewalling is not surprising as government officials are not in the habit of throwing themselves on their sword. In this case, however, a line was crossed into what I would characterize as criminality.
These email threads serve to put meat on the bone of my past mentions of stonewalling on public records production in my attempt to investigate ethics violations, since sustained by the New Rochelle Board of Ethics. Even a cursory review will reveal a sustained and ongoing campaign to interfere with my gathering evidence against Noam Bramson and Sara Kaye. They also, I believe, establish a predicate for a preliminary inquiry to justify a criminal investigation by the Westchester County District Attorney’s Office. Such an inquiry would, I hope, connect up with the DA investigation into the expected criminal referral by the City of New Rochelle for the numerous, pristinely documented ethics violations by Bramson and Kaye.
The primary culprits here are Noam Bramson, Sara Kaye and Communications Director Kathy Gilwit. They appear to have been assisted by various political actors and attorneys in their scheme.
The deliberate withholding of public records pursuant to a Freedom of Information request is illegal and the conduct of Bramson and Kaye, not only withholding of their emails, but their hiding emails by using private email accounts to conduct official business, and possible if not likely destruction of records, appears to be criminal. And, of course, there is the underlying motive of why they would withhold, hide or destroy records.
Kathy Gilwit, in this instance as in past instances, appears to have been a willing participant in what amounts to a conspiracy to obstruct fulfilling lawful FOIL requests.
To this date, almost 3 months since my first FOIL request on September 15, 2023, thousands of records have yet to be produced, many involving Sara Kaye, and in particular, 250 emails sent between the City of New Rochelle believed to be to/from Sara Kaye and Ropes, Gray law firm where Sara Kaye’s husband is a partner.
Having established the record of email threads here I expect to reference this archive in future articles.
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