Percoco Kept His Hands in Albany, Even After Quitting His State Job

NEW YORK — In July 2014, faced with a state requirement that they wanted to avoid, executives with a Syracuse-area developer turned to someone who they thought had the juice to help: Joseph Percoco, a close friend of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo.

There was one slight hitch: Percoco had recently resigned as one of the governor’s top aides, and had moved on to managing Cuomo’s re-election campaign.

“Todd, is there any way Joe P can help us?” one of the executives, Steven Aiello, wrote to a lobbyist, Todd R. Howe, who had long-standing connections to Percoco.

The answer was yes: Percoco was able to have the requirement — which would have forced COR, the Syracuse-area developer, to talk to union representatives on a pending building project — reversed in December 2014.

Percoco did so with a phone call “to the person in the governor’s office who was overseeing the issue,” a prosecutor, Robert L. Boone, told the jury last week as Percoco’s trial on federal corruption charges began in Manhattan.

Prosecutors have charged that Aiello’s firm, COR Development, paid Percoco $35,000 in bribes in return for official actions on the firm’s behalf. The money, the government has said, was funneled to Percoco through a shell company set up by Howe.

The prosecutors have also suggested that Percoco peddled his influence in Albany even when he was off the state’s payroll, flouting ethical guidelines.

Percoco has vigorously denied any wrongdoing, as have his three co-defendants, including the two COR executives, Aiello and Joseph Gerardi.

But on Monday, prosecutors introduced emails and other evidence that seemed to bolster the government’s claim that Percoco continued to trade on his influence in the governor’s chamber after resigning from his state post in April 2014.

“Even though Percoco was physically gone, his power never left,” the prosecutor, Boone, said last week.

A chart presented by a federal investigator to the jury on Monday showed that between May 1 and Dec. 7, 2014, the period when Percoco was running Cuomo’s campaign, 837 calls were made on 68 days from the telephone on the desk he had formerly used in the governor’s executive chamber in Manhattan, a suite of offices at 633 Third Ave.

During cross-examination, defense lawyers on Monday seemed to be trying to show that there was no way of knowing who was actually placing the calls from Percoco’s office telephone.

Another chart showed that on Dec. 3, 2014 — just days before Percoco was rehired as a top state aide to the governor — Percoco’s swipe card was used to enter the executive chamber office on the 38th floor in Manhattan.

It has been unclear throughout the trial just how much Percoco used his former state offices during the eight months that he was working on the campaign.

Cuomo, a Democrat, has not been accused of any wrongdoing, and his office has not commented during the trial.

The governor’s chief of staff, Linda Lacewell, testified last week that after Percoco resigned in April 2014, she occasionally saw him in the governor’s chamber in Manhattan.

“I might see him for two or three days in the office and then not see him for a long time, and then he might be there again,” she said.

She said that she did not know what Percoco was doing in his former office and that no one else had use of it during that period.

On Monday, a prosecutor, Janis Echenberg, asked another witness, Seth Agata, a former counsel in the governor’s office, whether he and Percoco had ever discussed possible conflicts of interest that might arise after Percoco left to run the re-election campaign.

Agata recalled one conversation that took place in July 2014 in Percoco’s office in Albany.

“Why do you refer to it as Joe’s office?” Echenberg interjected, adding that Percoco was not a government employee at the time.

Agata paused. “Joe had been in that office for so many years,” he said, adding that there were “cartons” of Percoco’s belongings still inside and nobody else was using the space.

As for the advice that he had given Percoco about possible conflicts of interests, Agata said, he offered a simple maxim: “Don’t touch it with a 10-foot pole,” he said of state business. “Just stay back from it, and you’ll be fine.”

Howe is expected to be the prosecution’s star witness; he pleaded guilty in 2016 to charges associated with the bribery scheme and has his own long-standing Cuomo connections.

Other emails among Howe, Aiello and Gerardi showed the influence the developers believed Percoco had — and would wield on their behalf.

After Percoco handled the labor issue for COR, Aiello wrote to Howe that state officials who had tried to enforce the union requirement had “underestimated the power of TH, JP!,” referring to Howe and Percoco by their initials.

“Not me,” Howe replied. “JP.”