Levy's campaign paid defense lawyer $35G

Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy's campaign committee spent $35,000 since January to pay Levy's defense attorney, new campaign finance reports show.

The fee to Garden City criminal defense attorney Stephen P. Scaring was paid March 24, the day Levy announced he would not run for re-election. It was part of total spending of $239,862 between Jan. 14 and July 11, according to the campaign finance reports.

Levy, a Republican, said he would not seek re-election and was giving up his $4 million war chest as part of a deal with the Suffolk County district attorney's office. The move followed an investigation that District Attorney Thomas Spota said revealed "serious issues with regard to fundraising and the manner in which it was conducted."

Levy spokesman Dan Aug said the district attorney's office allowed the use of campaign dollars for Scaring, and to pay $35,000 to the St. James law firm of Jakubowski, Robertson, Maffei, Goldsmith & Tartaglia, Llp. A woman who answered the phone Tuesday at Jakubowski said before hanging up that the firm had no comment.

While declining to discuss specific expenditures, Spota spokesman Robert Clifford said: "If the expenditures are lawful, we are unable to prevent them. There is precedence by various elected officials around the state who have used such funds to defray legal expenses."

Scaring said that because his services were related to the raising of campaign funds, the payment is "a legitimate expense."

Jerry Goldfeder, a Manhattan attorney who specializes in election law, called the campaign fund statute "elastic," but said Levy's attorney payments were legal because they were related to campaign fundraising. "Unfortunately, it's all too common for elected officials who find themselves in these types of situations to spend campaign dollars on criminal defense attorneys, but it's appropriate," Goldfeder said.

Aug said only that the payments to Scaring and Jakubowski were for "services rendered." Clifford said only that those payments were for "legal fees."

Scaring was a Nassau County assistant district attorney and chief of the DA office's Homicide Bureau from 1969 to 1977, according to his website. He served as a special prosecutor in Suffolk County.

Jakubowski, Robertson, Maffei, Goldsmith & Tartaglia describes itself on its website as a general practice law firm. An attorney with the firm, Edward Robertson, formerly tried "high-profile, high publicity corruption cases" at the Suffolk district attorney's office, according to the website. He now has an emphasis on defending and prosecuting personal injury cases, criminal defense and real estate, the website says.