ALBANY — Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver has lawyered up for the probe into his role in the Vito Lopez sex-harassment scandal, The Post has learned.
Silver (D-Manhattan) paid $35,000 from his $3.2 million campaign account to top-shelf Manhattan law firm Stroock, Stroock & Lavan last month as the state Joint Commission on Public Ethics investigated his approval of a secret sex-harassment settlement, records show.
“It’s legal fees related to the speaker’s cooperation with JCOPE,” Silver spokesman Michael Whyland said.
Silver approved $103,080 in taxpayer money last year to settle allegations that Lopez (D-Brooklyn) had harassed young female aides — charges that Lopez, who kicked in $32,000 of his own money, denied.
The payouts surfaced last August, after the Assembly’s ethics committee publicized separate but similar allegations that Lopez had groped and harassed two other female aides.
Silver stripped Lopez of the powerful Housing Committee chairmanship, but later said he was “wrong . . . from the perspective of transparency” to keep the earlier settlement secret.
Silver has turned to Stroock before. He paid the firm out of his campaign account in 2004 when state-lobbying regulators investigated allegations that casino giant Caesars Entertainment gave him and his wife a discounted suite at its Las Vegas hotel. Silver wasn’t accused of wrongdoing in the Caesars case, which focused on the company.