Tipsheet

Whoa: Trump Predicted Demise Of One Of His Top Foes: NY Attorney General Eric Schneiderman

Matt Vespa
Matt Vespa  |  May 08, 2018 7:30 AM

Cortney wrote about this last night. It would appear that New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman had issues of his own in the Me Too moment. Multiple women accused the now-ex attorney general of abuse. Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo had called on Schneiderman to resign, which he did. Jane Mayer and Ronan Farrow wrote a lengthy piece of the alleged abuse in The New Yorker. The accounts are disturbing, with one woman so shaken by Schneiderman’s alleged abuse that she wrote down the details, locked them in a safety deposit box, and gave two keys to it to two friends after she felt she was threatened by him. Oh, and this was after several women told her to more or less shut up about the abuse because Schneiderman was too important of a figure for the Democratic Party to lose:

Now Schneiderman is facing a reckoning of his own. As his prominence as a voice against sexual misconduct has risen, so, too, has the distress of four women with whom he has had romantic relationships or encounters. They accuse Schneiderman of having subjected them to nonconsensual physical violence. All have been reluctant to speak out, fearing reprisal. But two of the women, Michelle Manning Barish and Tanya Selvaratnam, have talked to The New Yorker on the record, because they feel that doing so could protect other women. They allege that he repeatedly hit them, often after drinking, frequently in bed and never with their consent. Manning Barish and Selvaratnam categorize the abuse he inflicted on them as “assault.” They did not report their allegations to the police at the time, but both say that they eventually sought medical attention after having been slapped hard across the ear and face, and also choked. Selvaratnam says that Schneiderman warned her he could have her followed and her phones tapped, and both say that he threatened to kill them if they broke up with him. (Schneiderman’s spokesperson said that he “never made any of these threats.”)

A third former romantic partner of Schneiderman’s told Manning Barish and Selvaratnam that he also repeatedly subjected her to nonconsensual physical violence, but she told them that she is too frightened of him to come forward. (The New Yorker has independently vetted the accounts that they gave of her allegations.) A fourth woman, an attorney who has held prominent positions in the New York legal community, says that Schneiderman made an advance toward her; when she rebuffed him, he slapped her across the face with such force that it left a mark that lingered the next day. She recalls screaming in surprise and pain, and beginning to cry, and says that she felt frightened. She has asked to remain unidentified, but shared a photograph of the injury with The New Yorker.

[…]

After the former girlfriend ended the relationship, she told several friends about the abuse. A number of them advised her to keep the story to herself, arguing that Schneiderman was too valuable a politician for the Democrats to lose. She described this response as heartbreaking. And when Schneiderman heard that she had turned against him, she said, he warned her that politics was a tough and personal business, and that she’d better be careful. She told Selvaratnam that she had taken this as a threat.

The former girlfriend told Selvaratnam she found it “shameless” that Schneiderman was casting himself as a leading supporter of the #MeToo movement. She promised to support Selvaratnam if she spoke out, but she wasn’t sure that she could risk joining her. The former girlfriend told Selvaratnam she’d once been so afraid of Schneiderman that she’d written down an extensive account of the abuse, locked the document in a safe-deposit box, and given keys to two friends.

Schneiderman filed a civil suit against Harvey Weinstein, the former top Hollywood producer, over his allegations of sexual abuse. As Cortney noted, the hypocrisy does not go unnoticed here. Yet, there was one person who seems to have known the sleazy nature of the former New York attorney general: President Donald J. Trump. The president tweeted in 2013, listing all the New York Democrats that had had fallen to scandal like Eliot Spitzer and Anthony Weiner. He said, “wait and see” about Schneiderman, whose dirt was worse than the former that were mentioned. Schneiderman is also something of a personal victory for Trump. He seems to have been head locked in a prolonged battle with the man, dating back to that year. Schneiderman was a top Trump foe, filing at least 100 legal actions against the Trump administration. 

In August of 2017, the Russian investigation spearheaded by Special Counsel Robert Mueller joined forces with Schneiderman to look into Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign manager, and his finances (via Politico):

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team is working with New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman on its investigation into Paul Manafort and his financial transactions, according to several people familiar with the matter.

The cooperation is the latest indication that the federal probe into President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman is intensifying. It also could potentially provide Mueller with additional leverage to get Manafort to cooperate in the larger investigation into Trump’s campaign, as Trump does not have pardon power over state crimes.

The two teams have shared evidence and talked frequently in recent weeks about a potential case, these people said. One of the people familiar with progress on the case said both Mueller’s and Schneiderman’s teams have collected evidence on financial crimes, including potential money laundering.

Well, this is certainly an embarrassing crossroads for that inquiry.