State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman must be sweating up a storm, given his role in the Gropez coverup.
Just what’s an ambitious AG to do?
Why, change the subject, of course.
Which might explain The New York Times’ curiously timed report last weekend noting that Schneiderman is now probing several private-equity firms, including Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital.
The AG, ostensibly, wants to know if the firms shifted fees into investments in order to avoid taxes.
But the probe involves federal issues over which he has no sway.
Plus, one key financial practice he’s reviewing — treating those fees as capital gains rather than as regular income — has never been ruled improper by the IRS.
Meanwhile, Schneiderman faces some uncomfortable questions of his own in the Vito Lopez sexual-harassment scandal:
* Did the AG and his aides conspire with Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver to hide the $103,000 settlement of charges against Assemblyman Lopez?
* Why did his office say it was contacted merely for “an informal consultation” about the deal, when in fact it got three separate e-mails about it, including when it was asked to flag anything “problematic”?
* Why didn’t the AG insist that Silver strike the deal’s confidentiality clause — if such a provision really violates Schneiderman’s policy, as he now says it does?
Yes, news of the Wall Street probe might take some heat off the AG.
But unfairly tarring the industry — a pillar of the city’s economy — can do untold damage.
True, a similar strategy helped make a prior AG, Eliot Spitzer, governor. But let’s just say, if Schneiderman thinks hitting financial firms and Wall Street will get him off the hook for the Gropez mess, well . . . he deserves whatever fate befalls him.