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Recently Arrested City Councilman Dan Halloran: Poet, Prophet
By
Lauren Evans
Published Apr 2, 2013
Modified Apr 3, 2013
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By
Lauren Evans
Published Apr 2, 2013
Modified Apr 3, 2013
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City Councilman Dan Halloran—everyone's favorite elected pagan—was arrested this morning along with State Senator Malcolm Smith for allegedly plotting to "rig this year’s mayoral election through fraud and bribes." The 28-page criminal complaint reveals not just the details of Halloran's alleged transactions, but a different side of the deposed councilman—a softer, more introspective side of a First Atheling man at war with himself.
Some of the recorded conversations between Halloran and a cooperating witness read like free form poetry, bundled with nuggets of wisdom and pithy truisms. Below, please find some of Halloran's more sagacious ruminations, and feel free to sing along.
The scene opens on September 7, 2012, with Halloran talking with a cooperating witness, who asked the councilman if he could get discretionary funding from the City Council budget.
That's politics, that's politics, it's all about
how much. Not about whether or will, it's about how much
and that's our politicians in New York, they're all like that
all like that.
And they get like that
because of the drive that the money does for everything else.
You can't do anything without the fucking money."
The cooperating witness went on to pay Halloran $7,500 in cash. Near the end of the conversation, Halloran remarked: "Money is what greases the wheels—good, bad, or indifferent."
September 27, 2012. An undercover FBI agent, a cooperating witness and Halloran meet in a Manhattan hotel. During the meeting, the undercover agent gives Halloran $6,500 in checks. The cooperating witness asked Halloran for $20,000 from the City Council discretionary fund. Halloran replied:
Absolutely, that's easy,
that's not even an issue, not even an issue...In fact,
I might even be able to get you more.
Halloran suggests he can call in favors from other council members, thereby increasing the discretionary fund allocation.
You tell me how you want me to do it
that's what we'll do.
Halloran then asks the cooperating witness to get a tax ID number, name and address of a corporation and an application for discretionary funding so that
there's no questions, it raises no flags, and everybody's
got it
the way it's gotta be.
You do it the right way, not a
problem, then you will definitely have my
my
member
item
The scene closes with Halloran, the cooperating witness and the undercover FBI agent, raising their glasses. It was not Halloran, but the witness who offered the portentous parting words:
"Pleasure doing business with you."
In a particular twist of irony, Halloran also requested Smith use his power to appoint him Deputy Police Commissioner, being that he served on the NYPD and all. The current Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne was quick to clarify in a statement that Halloran was only "a police cadet, the equivalent of a college intern," for three months in 1990, before he resigned.
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Lauren Evans
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