Rockland DA to handle probe of alleged Mount Kisco election fraud
Rockland prosecutors are picking up the investigation into alleged election fraud in the Mount Kisco mayor’s race after Westchester District Attorney Mimi Rocah recused herself because of ties to one of the candidates.
The investigation centers on allegations that William Serratore, chairman of the Mount Kisco Democratic party, and his son, Carmelo, included forged signatures on nominating petitions they collected on behalf of Thomas Luzio.
Luzio, a former longtime Westchester prosecutor, is facing Deputy Mayor Lisa Abzun in the June 27 Democratic primary. He had left the DA’s Office before Rocah's election in November 2020 but he was an advisor to her campaign and served on her transition team.
In her request for a special prosecutor last week, Rocah told acting state Supreme Court Justice James McCarty that she believed her office could have investigated the allegations "under the highest standards of prosecutorial conduct" but that a special prosecutor was appropriate "to avoid any appearance of impropriety or any prospective conflict of interest."
Rockland DA Thomas Walsh had agreed to pick up the case and McCarty appointed him. Walsh's office would keep it from the investigation through any disposition if criminal charges are brought.
There are no allegations that Luzio acted improperly in the collection of nominating signatures. But after a petition challenge to the Board of Elections was deemed untimely, a lawyer for Abzun on April 20 asked the DA’s Office to investigate the petition pages collected by the Serratores. Abzun has said that Luzio should drop out of the race if forgeries are confirmed as Serratore, a seasoned political player, was acting on his behalf.
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The lawyer provided an affidavit from a private investigator hired by the Abzun campaign attesting to interviews with people who purportedly had signed the Luzio petitions but insisted they had not. The campaign also provided affidavits from several people who said their signatures were forged.
Five days later the lawyer met with a DA investigator and on April 28 Rocah's press office acknowledged she would be recusing herself.
It was not until May 24 that Rocah formally requested the appointment of a special prosecutor and McCarty ordered Walsh's appointment the next day. Jin Whang, a spokeswoman for Rocah, said Wednesday that the application took that amount of time primarily because four other DAs in the region said they were unable to accept the case.
William Serratore did not respond to messages seeking comment when The Journal News/lohud first reported the investigation. But after the article appeared online May 1, he texted a reporter saying the Board of Elections had rejected Abzun's claims and she could have gone to court but did not. He suggested she was only seeking a headline about an investigation that would damage Luzio's candidacy.
“The MK Dem Committee voted not (to) endorse her and she blames me for that,” he wrote. “This is political partisan nonsense.”
But the elections board never took up the merits of Abzun’s claims and when asked in a follow up to comment on the allegations that he had submitted forged signatures, Serratore never responded. He did not immediately respond to messages on Wednesday.
This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Mount Kisco NY alleged election fraud: Rockland DA will investigate
