THE state Public Integrity Commission could seek disciplinary action against a former top aide to Gov. Spitzer at a meeting Friday, while Senate investigators prepare for a new hearing on the Dirty Tricks Scandal four days later.
Sources said the commission’s executive director, Herbert Teitelbaum, may ask the 13-member Spitzer-controlled panel to approve a “notice of reasonable cause” against Darren Dopp, the governor’s former communications director.
The sources said the notice would charge Dopp with violating the state Ethics Law by using the State Police to gather evidence purportedly damaging to Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno (R-Rensselaer), which he then leaked to an Albany newspaper.
Teitelbaum, who has been accused by Republicans and some close to Dopp of trying to cover up for Spitzer in the scandal, told associates that “he wants to wrap this thing up quickly, bringing the investigation to a close,” a source told The Post.
A notice of reasonable cause is the equivalent of an administrative indictment and would set in motion a public disciplinary procedure that could result in Dopp – who was suspended by Spitzer last summer for his involvement in the scandal – being fined or censured for an Ethics Law violation.
Dopp, who now works for Spitzer-connected lobbyist Patricia Lynch, is also the subject of a grand-jury investigation being conducted by Albany County District Attorney David Soares.
Meanwhile, the Republican-controlled Senate Investigations Commission has slated a hearing for a week from tomorrow to take testimony from electronic-communications experts on the use of BlackBerry and other telephone and Internet devices – and the backup computer- server records that document their use – by Spitzer and members of his administration.
Officials from RIM, or Research in Motion, a key provider of BlackBerry services for the governor’s office, are expected to testify.
Spitzer is battling a subpoena issued by the Senate committee for e-mail and other electro nic- communications re cords connected to the scandal.
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Soares, who even Spit zer-administration insid ers concede has sought to cover up the scandal, is harshly described as “docile” and “not inde pendent” by Senate Re publicans in a newly filed state Supreme Court brief. The brief, submitted in response to Spitzer’s challenge to the Senate subpoenas, notes that Soares “conducted no grand-jury probe, spoke to no one under oath and received only documents that were voluntarily turned over to him” during what he claimed was a thorough investigation of the scandal in late August.
The brief charges that Soares’ “method of investigation seemed unusually casual, remarkably narrow and, as a consequence, unremarkable and unreliable in its outcome.”