On Friday, September 23, a jury was finally chosen in the case known as People v Haggerty, the case involving the 2009 election for Mayor of New York city. See this story. Mayor Bloomberg contributed more than $1,000,000 to the Independence Party. It appears he expected the party to give the money to John Haggerty (which it did, apparently), and that he expected Haggerty to use the money to pay people to watch the polls on election day, and perhaps to challenge certain kinds of voters. Haggerty allegedly took the money but did not perform the service. The mayor may have used the Independence Party because the money was coming from Bloomberg’s own personal funds, instead of from his campaign treasury. This method of moving money would have delayed disclosure of the expenditure.
As part of this case, the court has frozen the house account of the NY Independence Party. It contains part of the supposed stolen money, around $250,000, that the prosecutors want back until the case is resolved. For now the court just froze the entire account. Haggerty returned some of the money to the IP and their lawyers say they want to hold it until the case is done.