I also wrote that Mr. Gleason was successful in securing the assigned free counsel for the wife of high-ranking administrative judge, Ellen Coccoma and Eugene Peckham, the retired judge who was sued in his individual capacity for his actions as a private attorney after his retirement.
Mr. Gleason's advocacy for Ellen Coccoma and Eugene Peckham could not be attributed to his work for his clients in the federal lawsuit in question at all, because Ellen Coccoma and Eugene Peckham were not his clients in that lawsuit.
I also wrote that I made a Freedom of Information Request to the New York State Attorney General's Office requesting copies of the e-mails that Mr. Gleason asked the court to have my husband, a pro se Plaintiff in litigation against Ellen Coccoma and Eugene Peckham, to pay for (which the judge, Gary L. Sharpe, who has his own history of disqualification, misconduct and grudges against Mr. Neroni, granted in full, without regard to the screaming and shameless illegality of such a request).
Judge Sharpe's misconduct pertaining to my husband is described in my blog here, here, here and here.
Judge Sharpe also sanctioned me after I made an inquiry whether his son works for the New York State Attorney Generals Office (he does), and the court where he is the Chief Judge dismissed my federal lawsuit against itself and against Judge Sharpe individually, before the lawsuit was even served.
Think about it - a defendant agency in a civil case is presiding over that case and dismissing it against itself and its officers whose misconduct is alleged in the lawsuit.
I bet, many defendants who are on the receiving end of a foreclosure, eviction, consumer credit, family court or criminal proceedings would want that kind of power. To dismiss a lawsuit against yourself, before it was served, and to block discovery and, possibly, the jury trial that may reveal your misconduct- isn't that sweet?
Back to my FOIL about the e-mails - yesterday I received a response to my FOIL request from the NYS Attorney General's Office.
As you can see from the letter of the NYS AG's office, it was a complete denial of my FOIL request on the following grounds:
(1) that the sought e-mail were "attorney work product". They were not, because Mr. Gleason had no business working for Ellen Coccoma or Eugene Peckham in that federal lawsuit where Ellen Coccoma and Eugene Peckham were not his clients (the e-mails were to secure a free representation by NYS AG for non-clients, both politically connected attorneys, one being a spouse of a high-ranking judge, the other - a retired judge himself);
(2) that the sought e-mails were covered by the "attorney-client privilege". They were not, because, once again, Mr. Gleason was advocating for Ellen Coccoma or Eugene Peckham who were not his clients.
(3) that the sought e-mails were covered by the "intra-agency exemption", which is, in other words, a claim that the e-mails I was seeking was generated inside the NYS AG office, for its own purposes. That was clearly not true because the e-mails were generated or reviewed by Mr. Gleason who claimed throughout the litigation that he is a law partner for a private law firm Hinman, Howard and Kattel, LLP out of Binghamton, NY and not for the New York State Attorney General's office.
An interesting question arises since NYS AG is part of the executive branch of the government, which may be covered by Governor Cuomo's recently revealed "policy" directing employees of the executive branch of the New York State to destroy their e-mails - and, obviously, with them, any evidence of any possible misconduct that a nosy journalist or a member of the public, through a Freedom of Information request, would seek to discover and expose.
Or, does the claimed fighter of fraud in the government NYS Attorney General Mr. Schneiderman have a similar policy of its own - to destroy or stall access to emails of public concern?
By the way, how can Mr. Schneiderman now, on the one hand, be a designated counsel for Mr. Cuomo in good faith in all lawsuits filed against Mr. Cuomo by civil rights plaintiffs - and, at the same time, to handle any kind of investigation against possible impropriety and tampering with potential evidence of misconduct by Mr. Cuomo.
How can Mr. Schneiderman combine these two tasks that are mutually exclusive for any attorney under existing Professional Conduct Rules, at a time where Mr. Cuomo introduced a "policy" to delete e-mails specifically at the time when the Commission on governmental ethics (the Moreland Commission) was:
(1) disbanded by Mr. Cuomo after it started to target him and his friends and close associates and confidantes in their investigations and
(2) when the feds announced that they will look into Mr. Cuomo's and his office's behavior in regards to the Moreland Commission and even issued a subpoena to an employee of Mr. Cuomo?
Of course, no subpoenas can reach what was deleted, it is a time-honored foolproof solution against exposure - burn the compromising records (oops, press the "Delete" button).
Yet, since Mr. Cuomo knows that deleting e-mails by employees may not delete such e-mails from the cache of the computer - or the cloud drive, while his office switched to Office 365 - apparently, deleting the e-mails in accordance with Mr. Cuomo's policy is not a mere act of pressing the "delete" button, but may be a matter implicating the use of an army of computer specialists (at taxpayers' expense) to continuously cleanse public computers of public records - something the feds must definitely look into.
Against this background, is the New York State Attorney General Mr. Schneiderman who represents Mr. Cuomo in federal lawsuits instead of investigating him for misconduct part of the problem with fraud in New York State government rather than a solution to it, as he claimed to the voters during his election campaign?
And did Mr. Schneiderman also devise a policy to delete any evidence of misconduct of his own office, including negotiations about taxpayer-backed free representation of Ellen Coccoma and Eugene Peckham when Ellen Coccoma was turned down by her own insurance carrier and when, apparently, both Ellen Coccoma and Eugene Peckham, both attorneys and officers of the court sworn to protect and uphold the U.S. and New York State laws and Constitutions, did not want to pay an attorney out of their own pockets or represent themselves, as every other litigant does?
At this time, the question remains - do those e-mails that I was seeking, reflecting Mr. Gleason's advocacy for the two connected-to-state-judiciary non-clients to obtain taxpayer-paid free legal representation for their misconduct as private attorneys even continue to exist?
Did they ever exist? Due to this policy, will attorneys now be allowed to charge legal fees for treading air, as long as they claim e-mail exchange with the NYS AG's office, for something that is not ascertainable whether it existed in the first place?
I continue to believe that the issue as to the content of the e-mails by which a powerful and politically connected powerful attorney brokered taxpayer-backed free legal representation for a wife of a high-ranking judge and for a retired judge who were not his clients, and brokered that with a governmental official, is an issue of public concern.
Freedom of Information Law in New York has a presumption of disclosure for public records.
It is my firm belief that e-mail exchanges between a government official and a powerful politically connected attorney in order to secure free legal representation for a wife of a high-ranking judge and a retired judge, in a situation where neither Ms. Coccoma or Mr. Peckham were entitled to such representation, because they were sued for their private conduct, may be evidence of corruption in the government, are not covered by any privileges and must be shown to the public pursuant to a FOIL request.
Of course, I will file an administrative appeal of the denial of the FOIL request.
But - a rhetorical question nevertheless - does the New York State Attorney General have no shame?
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