Trotta still breathing, despite PBA's obit

Daily Point

McCaffrey asks Trotta to quit public safety panel over taping

Suffolk County Legis. Robert Trotta, a fierce critic of the county PBA, has been asked by Presiding Officer Kevin McCaffrey to resign from the Public Safety Committee. McCaffrey told The Point that Trotta had become a distraction for the Republican caucus after a hearing last month at which Trotta threatened to play a secret recording he said he made of a meeting with Police Commissioner Rodney Harrison.

“He realizes that being on that committee may not be the best thing for our caucus. I explained to him that it is counterproductive,” McCaffrey said. “I think it is going in the right direction."

McCaffrey, who has sole power over committee assignments, said there are still a few weeks before the March meeting of the legislature to resolve the issue.

Not even 10 minutes later, however, the Suffolk Police Benevolent Association applauded the removal of Trotta. "County Legislator Trotta's long and shameful history of bullying and intimidation tactics has finally caught up with him. His removal from the Public Safety Committee is well deserved,” said a statement from the union attributed to president Noel DiGerolamo.

Trotta, however, insisted that he had not resigned. “Why would I be removed for telling the truth,” he said about his status on the committee. “I am a little confused as to who runs the legislature.”

McCaffrey said he had “no idea” why the union sent the news release.

PBA spokesman Lou Civello defended the release of the statement. “We had thought that this was already done, that he had resigned.” And, he added, “Unlike Legislator Trotta, we don’t record conversations.”

Civello said the PBA would not correct the news release. “We are confident that as this plays out in the next few weeks he will no longer be on the Public Safety Committee."

While the PBA victory lap may be premature, Suffolk legislators are being inundated with emails, generated by the organization’s website that demand an ethics investigation of Trotta along with his removal from the committee with oversight of the police department. The union has posted on its website a six-minute clip of contentious exchanges at the Jan. 26 committee meeting.

McCaffrey acknowledged that he is “overrun” with the emails but said the PBA campaign was not the reason he suggested to Trotta, in a telephone call a few days ago, that he leave. “What brought it to a head was the taping of a private conversation with a member of the administration,” McCaffrey said. “You lose trust with the people you are dealing with when that happens."

Trotta, a former Suffolk detective, has been a lone crusader against the PBA tithing officers' salaries for political activities. Trotta has been unable to get various law enforcement agencies to bring charges against the PBA, so he was meeting with Harrison to see whether he would find the practice of PBA members soliciting contributions to be a violation of department rules.

— Rita Ciolli @ritaciolli

Talking Point

Smith’s Smithtown gig

When Kevin Smith, co-founder of Long Island Loud Majority, landed a job with the Smithtown Department of Public Safety in January, his critics were not happy. 

There were complaints about the political positions of his influential group, which has supported President Donald Trump and focused on local school and library board issues. And there were claims that Smith was present at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 as a protest turned into a riot.

Now Smith will not in fact be drawing his promised $19.91 per hour for part-time audio visual production work, The Point has learned.

“We were notified that the applicant decided not to take the position,” said Joyce Butindari of Smithtown Town Supervisor Ed Wehrheim’s office in a Tuesday email, after The Point inquired whether Smith had started work and whether Wehrheim had reviewed footage to determine if Smith had indeed been at the Capitol.

That was the claim of an anonymous social media account called “Smithtown BOE explained,” which this week posted video clips showing an individual who looks like Smith, wearing a Loud Majority cap, at the infamous Jan. 6 event, including near what appear to be the Capitol doors. The account says the clips come from a YouTube link posted by NBC News justice reporter Ryan Reilly, who confirmed that the long footage was introduced as evidence in federal court in the case of Derrick Evans, the West Virginia state lawmaker sentenced for his role in the attack.

Smith has vigorously worked to distance himself from the violent 2021 event. His lawyer Bonnie Lawston sent The Point a letter last year saying that her clients — Smith and the Loud Majority — “were not present at the Capital at the time of the alleged insurrection riots and public disturbances.” She said they were instead “at the Maryland Train Station filing [sic] out a police report over vandalism,” which she said could be corroborated by the report and phone records.

The Point filed a public records request for that police report in November, but has not received it.

Neither Smith nor his attorney returned calls from The Point asking about his Smithtown gig, which was to encompass between 17.5 and 20 hours a week and came with the option to join the New York State retirement system.

— Mark Chiusano @mjchiusano

Pencil Point

The debt knell 

For more cartoons, visit www.newsday.com/nationalcartoons

Final Point

The Santos donor pool

Some of George Santos’ big donors have spent the last few weeks doing damage control. That includes Andrew Intrater, the financier who manages money for a Russian oligarch, who told The New York Times that he cursed at Santos and called him a liar once the freshman Republican’s background became clear. Many of the big Long Island financial power brokers — like Matthew Bruderman, James Metzger, and the Maidenbaum family — have gone down the same road, according to Newsday reports that they felt lied to or otherwise misled.

Perhaps Santos will have a harder time raising money from those people in the future. But there are many fish in the campaign finance sea: Another big source of Santos cash has been Tatnall and Roberta Hillman of Aspen, Colorado. The Hillmans and the Tatnall Hillman trust gave more than $40,000 to various Santos-affiliated committees on the state and federal levels. Another $10,000 came into the state-level Rise NY PAC from a “Robert” Hillman, who listed a Massachusetts PO box address that also shows up in the address histories of the Aspen Hillmans.

The Hillman money comes from a coal, steel and gas fortune, according to Forbes, and a court filing says Tatnall went to Princeton University and served in the Navy. But little has been published about the pair other than that they have spent millions in conservative-leaning political contributions over the years.

Included in that largesse has been thousands of dollars to far-right candidates such as Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert, both of whom got Hillman checks long after their embrace of conspiracy theories was well-known.

Since his election, Santos has associated himself in various ways with the Greene and Matt Gaetz wing of the party, and that alliance could deepen as other Republicans abandon him and he faces a House Ethics Committee investigation, a probe acknowledged Tuesday by Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

The Hillmans are not opening up about their feelings regarding the Queens fabulist. A woman who answered a Hillman phone number and identified herself as Roberta said only “no comment” when reached by The Point. But Santos’ future filings in the spring and summer will help provide an answer to who still opens their pocketbook for him, among many other questions.

— Mark Chiusano @mjchiusano