Two Republican super PACs paid nearly $1 million this month to quietly settle an inquiry into whether they illicitly coordinated with the campaign of Lee Zeldin, a member of President Trump’s cabinet, during his 2022 run for governor of New York.
The state’s top elections watchdog spent years investigating the matter, using subpoenas to try to show that there was illegal overlap between the Zeldin campaign and two groups that spent $20 million supporting it, Save Our State Inc. and Safe Together New York.
An agreement to settle the case, reached in recent days, ultimately does not include an admission of wrongdoing by the super PACs, a copy of the document obtained through a Freedom of Information request shows. Mr. Zeldin, who is now the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, was not a party to the agreement.
But the $900,000 fine is the largest ever paid in a super PAC coordination case in New York, where the free-spending groups seeking to sway elections have grown in size and number over the last decade.
In an unsealed report of the state’s chief election enforcement counsel provided to The New York Times on Thursday, an investigator wrote that he had found “substantial evidence demonstrates that respondents knowingly and willfully coordinated with candidate Lee Zeldin, both directly and through agents, resulting in unlawful contributions.”
James Featherstonhaugh, an Albany lawyer who represented Save Our State, disputed that his client had done anything that violated the law, but wanted to end the back and forth.
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The post Super PACs Pay $900,000 to Settle Inquiry Tied to Zeldin’s Governor Run appeared first on New York Times.
